26 Seduction
by Thescarredman
Summary: Frank Colby is a man with secrets safeguarding many lives - including his own. But getting people to give up their secrets is Nicole Callahan's job, and she's very, very good at it. She has questions about Director Colby and his relationship with the Lynch Mob. Frank only thought that he had trouble with women before...
1. Different Methods

June 21 2004  
Guantanamo Bay Naval Preserve  
Detainee Camp Delta

First Sergeant Brian Wilcox, US Army Military Police Specialist, looked out over the waves breaking on the rocky shore below, thinking that, under other circumstances, the spot he was standing on could be a nice location for a resort.

He was looking south into the not-so-sparkling Caribbean – it was the start of hurricane season, and the day was windy and overcast. There weren't many pretty beaches on this stretch of Cuba's extreme southern shore – it was all low cliffs and surf-pounded rocks, actually – but it was still pretty scenic, so long as you were careful where you looked.

It wasn't as remote as it seemed, either. You couldn't see it from here, but there was a busy naval base just a couple miles to the north on the other side of the ridge. The sea was empty of traffic right now, but often he had seen cruise ships passing by, floating hotels tiny with distance just this side of the horizon. Though doubtless there were tourists aboard who might like a glimpse of the base, the patrol boats and helicopters – and the good sense of their captains - kept them from getting too close. Just out of sight over the horizon, the island of Haiti lay just a hundred miles south or southeast, take your pick. Jamaica was about a hundred and fifty to the southwest. And directly to the east, Castro's Cuba was just a mile away on the other side of the base's perimeter fence.

Guantanamo Naval Preserve was a fenced-off rectangle about nine miles by six, fifty square miles of real estate carved from the island of Cuba. That made Gitmo sound like a huge facility, but the Preserve was at least half water, its borders enclosing the southern half of a big bay, and the land surrounding it was mostly wild and undeveloped even after a century of Navy occupancy. The base and its airfield were situated on a pair of matching spurs of land that reached towards each other across the bay's inlet and nearly closed it off. A big airfield occupied the western spur, and the rest of the base facilities – including the detention center – the eastern spur. Gitmo, while a well-equipped and busy place, was far from being the Navy's biggest base.

Nevertheless, the detention center was isolated. The naval base's shops, docks and housing, though only a couple miles away, were crowded together on the spur's northern half facing into the Bay, and were separated from the camp on the empty southern shore by a chain of rugged hills that ran down the little peninsula's middle like a spine. Only a couple of narrow roads, twisty and little-used – and guarded - connected the two facilities. The detention facility was largely self-contained, with its own headquarters, staff housing and barracks, commissary, supply depot, hospital, and whatever else it needed to conduct its business with a minimum of communication with the rest of the base. To someone stationed there, Camp Delta seemed to be situated in the middle of nowhere.

Both relieving and reinforcing its isolation, the camp also had its own helipad – just a slab of concrete, a wind sock, and some beacons a short drive from the buildings, but very handy. It enabled visitors to arrive from the mainland or ships at sea - without having to land at the main base's airfield, take a boat across the inlet to the main base, then drive to the camp. Enabled them, in fact, to come and go without even being seen by anyone not directly connected with the detention center and its business. Sometimes those visitors had good reason to arrive and leave quietly.

Wilcox was standing near the pad now, waiting for such a visitor, an 'information specialist' – a common euphemism for the interrogators from the CIA and other spook shops who tramped in and out of here. Wilcox had been designated as this particular spook's guard and escort for as long as he was here. It was boring duty at best, teeth-grinding at worst: these characters were never good company. They didn't talk much. Some of them acted like they were too good to talk to you, like they belonged to some kind of elite. They always wore officer's rags and tags, even though the sergeant was sure many of them had never even served: another deliberate barrier to casual conversation.

Wilcox wasn't much impressed with their performance as a group. He had watched them working the detainees, and thought most of them were just bullies and con artists. He was sure that they got dick-all from most of the detainees they questioned, and compensated by getting creative with their reports. The sergeant doubted this character would be any different, even though he seemed to be getting the superstar treatment. Wilcox's written orders had omitted the guy's name and agency, which was routine procedure in this security-obsessed place. But the Captain himself had handed Wilcox the assignment, while delivering firm instructions to fully cooperate with their visitor, as well as a stern warning not to get too curious. All of which was far from routine.

The sound of rotor blades swelled in the air. Out of the clouds to the south, a Seahawk appeared and approached low, raising a tornado of grit once it reached land. Wilcox grabbed his hat and watched the bird touch down with exaggerated care - dropping slowly to within a few feet of the ground, hovering on its flare cushion for a moment, then putting all the wheels to the concrete at the same instant, gentle as a mother's kiss.

Forstner, the soldier waiting with Wilcox, pushed a short flight of rolling stairs to the closed side door. The pilot cut power and, against usual practice, let the sergeant and his driver stand eating dirt from the wash while the rotor spooled completely down and the air cleared before opening up. Immediately, one of the chopper's crew, a Marine in flight gear, jumped down and turned to the open doorway, apparently to make sure the Army pukes had locked the stair wheels and to help their passenger negotiate the three steps to the pavement. _VIP indeed_, Wilcox thought sourly.

Then a figure appeared in the doorway, and the sergeant's mouth dropped open. "Ho-ly _fuck_."

…

Wilcox rode back to camp in the shotgun seat, turned sideways to keep an eye on Forstner, who was giving way too much attention to the rear-view mirror for the sergeant's comfort – although he could certainly sympathize. He resolutely tried not to look at the girl in the seat behind him. He imagined he'd done harder things in the line of duty, but none of them came to mind just then. "Just another minute to the center, miss. But would you like to freshen up before they check you through?"

_And put on something more appropriate?_ Not that her civvies were immodest: stretchy white jeans, tank top, wide-brimmed straw hat. But she was going to have trouble enough avoiding attention, no matter what she wore, and her present attire made her look like a tourist. Gitmo wasn't exactly a tourist destination, especially on this side of the ridge. The sooner he had her in some sort of uniform, at least, the more comfortable he would be.

"Oh, _thank_ you," she said. She had the sweetest voice of any female he'd ever known, despite looking barely old enough to vote. "A pit stop would be perfect. The copter ride from Kingston wasn't all that long, but they always shake me up a little."

Against all protocol, he found himself asking, "Kingston? Are you with a social services group or something?"

"No, just had some business there. They didn't tell you why I'm here?"

"I thought there might be a mistake. You're not much like any interrogator I've ever seen."

"Maybe different results require different methods, Sergeant."

He turned to her and smiled, and was immediately trapped by her eyes: beautifully shaped, thickly lashed, and a light clear violet, like gems. "Well, _I'd_ tell you anything you want to know." Surprised at himself, he turned back to face the windshield. _Back off, perv. She's young enough to be babysitting your niece. Has it been that long since your last leave?_ "But these guys have a different attitude about women."

"So I've been told. We'll just have to see if I'm up to the challenge." She leaned forward. "And, when it's just us, no officers or detainees, I'm Nicole, kay?"

He swallowed, his eyes turning back to her despite all resolve. "I'll try to remember that. Old habits die hard." He had absolutely no intention of calling this girl by her first name. Better to maintain some distance, he thought - before he remembered his sour thoughts on that subject just before the chopper had appeared. He finally had met an 'information specialist' who was friendly, outgoing – and damned easy on the eyes – and he felt uncomfortable talking with her. "Usually -"

Forstner stiffened and abruptly braked. The sergeant swung his eyes back to the road ahead, and saw the reason why. The vehicle halted just as the girl asked, "Something wrong?"

"Lizard," Wilcox said. He slid against the side window so she could look out the Hummer's windshield at the giant olive-green iguana stretched across half of the narrow road. "Give it a minute, it'll move on."

She leaned forward, placing a hand on the back of Wilcox's seat. "Is it dangerous?"

It took him a moment to answer. Her hand was smooth and perfect as a mannequin's, the fingers long and slender. Her skin, which was very light, lacked the subsurface markings that pale-skinned people usually have; almost like porcelain, in fact. Her nails, which extended just past the fingertips, were painted a pastel shade somewhere between rose and purple, a color that went well with her eyes and the strange, almost-purple highlights in her shoulder-blade-length black hair.

He finally said, "Well, you don't want to get bit by one. And they're faster than they look. But they're not aggressive, usually." He nodded towards the lizard in the road. "Especially not the females."

"Really." She smiled. "You can tell it's a female from here?"

From the back seat, her smile had been dazzling; with her lips a foot from his face, Wilcox found he had to clear his throat to speak. "The girls are prettier. No, really," he went on. "The males look so different you wouldn't think they're the same species."

"I'll skip the obvious comment. Not trying to tell you your business, but it looks like there's room to drive around."

"Rather not take the chance. The fine for killing one is ten thousand dollars."

He'd expected some incredulous comment; instead, she said, "Why is that?"

"They're on the EPA list, a protected species. Hunted for food all over the island, except for here. They grow twice as big at Gitmo as anywhere else."

She stared out the windshield at the creature, which was looking steadily back at them and showing no inclination to move. "The EPA has authority over military bases?"

He shrugged. "Technically, no. It's just part of the military's good-neighbor policy. Not to Cuba," he added quickly at her raised eyebrow. "But some of the military reservations in the U.S. have been there forever, and most of them have a lot of unused space, wild country. They're like wildlife refuges, and some host plant and animal life that's gone extinct everywhere else." He gave her a little smile. "Sometimes it's a consideration when Congress is weighing base closures."

She continued to stare out the windshield. "Not likely they're going to close this place anytime soon. It has a unique status."

"Unique in what way?" He'd heard all about the Preserve's weird history, of course, and all the legalistic crap, the arguments back and forth about how America's oldest overseas base had long outlived its original purpose - it had been built as a coaling station – and that its existence was a de-facto invasion of a sovereign power, which demanded the base's return at every UN session. He'd even heard it compared to a European microstate – it was bigger than some of them, and a damn sight more independent.

On the other side of the argument was the assertion that the base was situated on territory claimed by a government the U.S. didn't recognize, and that the lease was nevertheless still in force despite the change of regime because, about fifty years ago, somebody in Castro's brand-new government had – out of ignorance, presumably - cashed the base's rent check, constituting an assumption of the agreement, even though they hadn't cashed another in the decades since. He'd heard all about how useful the base was for the government's war on drugs, and as a staging area for relief efforts in the Caribbean. To Wilcox, it just boiled down to the fact that, no matter how unwanted, the U.S. Navy was a tough tenant to evict.

But if this girl had something to say about it, no matter how unoriginal, he'd listen. Hell, he'd listen to her read a phone book.

She turned her head to meet his eyes; their noses were a hand's width apart, and he could feel her warm breath on his face as she spoke. "It's unique, because we don't have to sidestep any rules to do exactly what we want. The rules here are whatever we want them to be." She leaned back into her seat. Wilcox heard the door behind him open.

"Hey!" He reached for his door handle, but she was next to his door now, and he couldn't open it without hitting her. She smiled and shook her head as she passed by on her way to the front of the vehicle. Wilcox opened his door and put a foot out.

"No," she said firmly. "Stay in the car. I'll be right back." She stepped toward the iguana twenty feet away; its attention switched from the vehicle to her as she approached.

"Fuck," the driver said. Wilcox saw it too: a foot-long replica of the monster, skittering out from behind its mama and stopping just past its nose. "No wonder it wouldn't move."

The only times Wilcox had seen a lizard attack a human being were over food or their young, and on both those occasions the beasts had sent their victims to the hospital. He reached for his sidearm and stepped out of the car. "Miss! Get back here, now!"

"Sergeant," she said mildly, "you're scaring her." She stopped three steps from the creature, a distance it could cover in about half a second. "Cover me if you like, but stay with the car."

The iguana hissed. Its tail flicked stiffly. The girl crouched, hands loose between her knees, and stared at the lizard, which stared back. It hissed again. Wilcox pointed his weapon.

"Ten grand fine," Forstner reminded him.

"I'd only gamble with it anyway." But he brought the weapon down with a curse as the girl knelt and moved closer, partly masking his fire. She was close enough to touch the damn thing now, and he wavered, wanting to run up and yank her away but afraid of provoking the monster into harming her. He couldn't imagine how he'd explain bringing his protectee into the clinic with a couple of missing fingers before she'd even reached check-in. His heart leaped up as the girl stretched out a hand.

"Mother_fuck_," the driver said. Wilcox stared, unbelieving, as Nicole picked up the infant lizard in both hands, just inches from its mother's jaws, and stood. She walked across the road with it into the scrub, the adult following like a dog, and deposited it gently on the ground. Then she turned and walked briskly to the vehicle.

"Baby was just scared to cross," she said as she passed Wilcox and got back in. "No big deal."

"That was incredible." Wilcox got in and slammed his door shut. "And damn gutsy." _Insane, more like._

"Not really. It was easy enough to figure what she wanted. I just had to get a little trust from her."

The truck began to roll again. The iguanas ambled off into the brush and disappeared as the vehicle passed by. The sergeant decided that this girl was probably a _very_ good interrogator, if she could keep her soft heart in check; some of the detainees would likely eat her alive otherwise. "Why did you do it?"

"Well, I thought it would be quicker than talking you into running them over," she said. "I _really_ have to pee."

Their first destination after preliminary check-in was the 'quarters' assigned for their visitor's use. Gitmo was America's oldest overseas base, and over the years it had developed into a pretty comfortable place to live. Some of the housing erected for officers looked no different from little subdivisions back home – gated communities even, in the case of senior officers and special guests such as the one Wilcox was escorting. When the car pulled up to a stop in front of the assigned address, the girl got out and stood with her butt against the car door, looking at it: a neat two-bedroom sitting on its own quarter acre of carefully manicured lawn. Wilcox said, "Something wrong?"

The corners of her mouth turned up. "I think it may be the most _normal_ place I could ever call mine, even temporarily. You guys really do like to make yourselves at home here, don't you?"

"Well, base housing doesn't all look like this. This is VIP accommodations."

"Where do you sleep, Brian?"

It suddenly occurred to him that he didn't remember giving her his first name. "About half a mile from here. Some of the noncoms stay in a row of cinderblock rooms, looks like a motel from the Fifties."

"What about you, Max?"

Corporal Forstner stirred, as Wilcox had, at her unexpected mention of his first name. The sergeant had assumed that both their assignments to this 'information specialist' had been random, but maybe not. If not, then why had they been picked? Forstner said, "Barracks, ma'am, like any other base, but it's pretty comfortable. Even got my own room. I probably have as much personal space as the Sergeant. Just not as much privacy."

"Hm." She marched up the walk to the house, followed by Wilcox and the driver, who carried her little off-the-shoulder pack.

At the front door, she paused at the doorknob. "The doors lock?" She said, amused. "Does anybody lock them?"

Wilcox shrugged, grabbed the handle, and pushed it down, opening the door. He pushed it open and stepped back. "The key's probably on the kitchen counter. Whether you use it is up to you."

After 'Nicole' – the name suited her, but Wilcox had no reason to believe it was the one she had been born with – had freshened up and put on an Army undress uniform, complete with lieutenant's bars, he took her on a tour of the facility. As a disguise, the uniform was only partly successful: with her hair up under her cap, she looked okay from a distance, but anyone who got close enough to talk to her would know at a glance that she didn't belong in a lieutenant's uniform, and that she was a stranger here.

Guantanamo Detention Center actually comprised several prisons. Most of the inmates were housed at Camp Delta, the main facility, but were separated into half a dozen sub-camps according to legal status, disposition, or the level of security deemed necessary to contain and process them. Cautiously, Wilcox said, "How many … facilities did you plan to visit?"

"Besides the official ones?" She gave him an amused look. "Is that your way of asking if I work for the CIA, Brian?" Before he could answer, she went on, "I know about the three installations the Agency maintains in the hills north of here. I also know about the off-site camp where the Delta detainees go for 'enhanced interrogation.' I'll probably set up shop in that last one, actually, but the Company's business is none of mine."

The tour of Camps One through Three was quick and cursory – that only made sense, Wilcox thought: whatever Nicole was here for, it wasn't to process or evaluate the common detainees. Camp Four, where the most compliant and trusted detainees were housed, evinced more interest: she went through the dorm-style facility carefully, and made a study of the privileges and comforts that the detainees thought important.

At Camp Five, where the troublemakers were housed and disciplined, her manner changed, cooling. She followed the MPs as they made their rounds, walking down the row of cell doors and pausing to peer into their tiny windows. She looked in as well, the smile gone from her face. At first, Wilcox thought she was repelled by the small hard cells with a squat toilet in the corner, in which the hardcases were held in solitary confinement twenty-three hours a day. Then she said, "So this inspection is regular procedure?"

"Yes, ma'am," he said. "We look in on each detainee about every two or three minutes."

"Day and night?"

"Yes." The lights never dimmed in this place, especially in the cells.

"Do they resent the intrusion, or look forward to it?"

And suddenly he realized her attention was on the men, not their cages, and that was the cause of her change in manner. Nicole had her game face on. "They get used to it. It's all I can really say. We interact with them as little as possible."

"Do you escort them to 'Camp No,' or does someone else do it?"

The MP's eyes flicked over to him. Wilcox said cautiously, "This isn't a discussion we should be having here."

She nodded, seeming to dismiss the question, and produced a gadget resembling a high-end calculator, or possibly a fancy cellphone. She touched a few buttons on it, reading the screen, and said, "I have a list of five people – three hardcases in this wing, a trusty in Camp Four, and one boy in the general population in Camp Six. That list may get longer, depending on how the interviews go."

They reached the end of the row. "Okay. Do you want to see Camp Six next?"

"I'm not going near Camp Six," she said. "Most of the men there will be going free someday. I want as few of them to see me as possible."

"Okay," he said slowly. "So, what next?"

"There's one camp left to see here besides Six." Her eyes met his. "I'm not interviewing anyone there, but I'd like to see it."

...

Camp Delta had a handful of children behind the wire, kids who had been taken with their parents, or with people who had been thought to be. They were housed in a dorm within the compound, but separate from the rest of it, called Camp Iguana. One of its offices had been set up as a one-room school, and a portion of the exercise yard had been separately fenced and provided with playground equipment. Nicole and Wilcox, in the presently-empty main exercise yard, watched through the fence the children climbing the jungle gym and the ladder to the slide. The sergeant said, "I suppose this seems cruel to you."

"I don't know," she replied, eyes shadowed by the bill of her cap and hidden behind her sunglasses. "I can imagine worse ways to spend your childhood. Whatever they've lost being here, they don't seem to miss." She nodded toward the MP standing guard, wearing a holstered sidearm but no rifle, in the corner of the little playground. "They certainly don't have to look over their shoulders for bullies."

He gestured at the green mesh sheeting covering the outer fence, blocking the view of the sea. "It's been a long time since they've seen anything but blank walls. Some of them don't remember anything else."

"They still have the sky," the girl said dismissively. "They have security, and food, and medical care, and one another. There are worse places they could be."

"I suppose," he said doubtfully. "But a prison is no place for a kid to grow up."

"Neither is a refugee camp, or a favela, or a good percentage of the world's orphanages. I'm sure you could find thousands of children who'd gladly trade places with these." She turned away and headed for the building's entrance. "And plenty of adults who would envy their carefree childhood."

...

Nicole smiled across the table at the middle-aged man in the white coveralls that made him look more like a painter than a detainee. "Really, Arash, didn't it occur to you how suspicious it would seem if someone stopped you? A man trying to drive across the border into Iraq, with a gym bag full of US currency in the trunk?"

They were in a small conference room located in Camp Four. Camp Four housed the most co-operative inmates, some of whom, it was widely believed – even by people who supported Gitmo and its policies wholeheartedly - simply didn't belong here. They had been taken into custody under questionable circumstances and brought to Guantanamo by a series of misjudgments, and were now trapped by shifting politics and the convolutions of the haphazard and improvised legal system that processed 'detainees'. There were no internationally recognized courts authorized to try them, and some very vague terminology used to define their status in international agreements. Without a binding acquittal by a recognized system of justice, there was no place for them to go. Even the countries where they held citizenship wouldn't take them. Some of them were even in a state of quasi-asylum, because sending them home would be a death sentence for them, even after finding them innocent of the charges they had been brought here under - a few, precisely _because _they had been found innocent.

Arash Rostami returned the smile, his eyes drifting briefly from the girl's face to rove over the visible portion of her upper body. "Well, miss-"

"Nicole." The exotic little beauty, wearing a uniform that looked as out of place on her as a burkha, put an elbow on the table and gently touched the backs of her fingers to her cheek, drawing his eye and clouding his concentration. "I'm using your first name, it's only fair you should use mine, don't you think?"

"Nicole. That's lovely." Very Western, probably with some profane Christian meaning, but on her it seemed right.

"Thank you." Her lashes lowered, veiling her gemlike eyes. "I think 'Arash' sounds like a name for an adventurer of some sort." Her voice was sweet and melodic, a pleasure to listen to. The faint scent coming off her was unlike anything he had smelled in this antiseptic place… "An explorer, maybe, or a pirate captain. Or a smuggler, or a revolutionary. The sort of man one might expect to be carrying a bagful of money."

He struggled to regain his focus. "Ah. Well, put that way, it does seem a little naïve. But I really am just a small businessman. I had nothing but the best intentions. I didn't think the men at the checkpoint would be so hard to convince."

"But you weren't stopped at a checkpoint," she said. "You were trying to cross on a goat track of a road just three miles from the highway." Nicole's smile stayed firmly in place, and her voice was light and bantering. "I think you had some idea, Arash."

"No, no. I tried to cross at the highway checkpoint first. But the line was a kilometer long, and I just got impatient, I suppose."

She nodded as if she actually believed him, and he smiled inwardly. Rostami had seen his share of false sympathy from interrogators since his apprehension, but somehow, this girl projected a sort of sincerity that was impossible to disbelieve. "You were born in Iran, but you're a Jordanian citizen, lived there half your life. You had roots in the community and a successful used car business. Why sell out and pull up stakes and move to a strange country, one where the fires of war haven't even been put out?"

It dimly occurred to the man that this lovely young girl hadn't brought a file or any other paperwork to this meeting. Later, he would wonder why his mental alarms hadn't gone off at that observation, but now he just felt a warm flush from the attention. It made him feel, for the first time since he had come here, that the person asking him questions wasn't already certain of the answers. "Well, first, I wanted to help. I've been doing business in Iraq for years, and I have many friends there. I knew there would be countless shortages, and people would be selling luxury items like cars to buy things they needed. I could put cash in their hands and help myself as well, turning a good profit by exporting the cars for resale."

From the corner of the room, Wilcox stood watching the two of them, pretending not to listen. It took everything he had not to roll his eyes as the smarmy little con artist worked the girl. He had seen Detainee Five Eleven interviewed before; the sergeant was sure the guy had been a successful salesman, probably specializing in auction beaters at inflated prices. He hoped Nicole wasn't as taken in as she seemed; Five Eleven might not belong here, but that didn't make him likeable. And being a model prisoner didn't make him trustworthy.

Nicole said, "You're, what, maybe fifty years old?"

He smiled at her. "Fifty-six. Thank you for the compliment."

"You came to Jordan at twenty-five, alone, crossing the border on foot. Why did you leave Iran?"

"Because life there was simply crushing. Everything you said, everything you did, someone was watching you, trying to decide if you should be punished. You could break the law a dozen times just walking to the store and back for a paper."

She nodded. "You must have hated living under clerical law."

"You have no idea. Even if you weren't in trouble with the authorities, all someone had to do was claim that you were impious, and they could get away with doing whatever they wanted with you."

"Would you call yourself pious?"

"Yes, of course. But I'm also an independent thinker." He smiled. "I'm sure that's true of you too, Nicole."

She smiled back. "So you came to Jordan, arranged a loan, and went into business. The person who loaned you the money – a friend of the family, you said?"

"Yes, an old one, another Persian who left the country years before. The regime is driving out talented people by the thousands."

"I've never been to Jordan," she said. "Is it pretty?"

"Parts of it are. Green and fragrant. The cities are clean and peaceful and orderly. People are friendly." He gave her a little smile. "It's also very progressive, quite Western for a Middle Eastern country. The highway signs are even printed in English. When I'm back home, you should visit. I'd be happy to show you around."

"I'm sure you'd make a very good guide." She took a sip of water from a paper cup. "Your English is excellent."

"Thank you."

"_Hal tatakalam alearabiat'aydaan?_"

"_Bikuli takid nem_." His smile widened. "_Lahjat jamilat._"

She held up a hand. "I don't really speak Arabic, just a few phrases."

"I said, you have a lovely accent. Maybe you don't speak it, but I'm sure you could pick it up easily."

"Oh, I doubt you really think that." She was still smiling, but Rostami felt a chill. "You know how Americans are. We expect everyone we deal with to speak our language, embrace our culture and customs, defer to our opinions. We think we run the world."

Wilcox straightened. When the little interrogator spoke, something seemed to happen to the air, as if it was charged in some way. The detainee felt it too: the smile vanished from his face. "Miss," he said, "I didn't mean to offend you, quite the-"

"Do I seem angry?" She was still smiling, but something about her show of teeth made Wilcox take a step closer to the table. "Let's move on, I think we're nearly done. Let's talk about setting up your business. What sort of permitting requirements did you expect to meet in Iraq? What people or agencies might you have had to deal with?"

Thirty minutes later, the sergeant returned the detainee to his dorm and came back for his charge. He found Nicole leaning back in her chair with her ankles crossed on top of the table, arms behind her head. She said, "You don't like him much."

He blinked, chasing away thoughts brought to the surface of his mind by the girl's oddly suggestive position. "Not because I think he's a terrorist, because I think he's an asshole." Something prompted him to break protocol and ask, "You think he belongs here?"

"Not at all." She dropped her feet to the table and stood. "He belongs in Penny Lane. Our cousins at Langley made a big mistake not claiming him."

'Penny Lane' was one of the three small CIA camps in the hills to the north of the main facility. Its purpose was to 'turn' selected enemy combatants and return them to the field as double agents. "Wait, what?"

She rounded the table, headed for the door. "Our friend thinks I'm too pretty to be smart, too young to know history, and too American to care what people do in the rest of the world. He left Iran years ahead of the Revolution. He's SAVAK. Former SAVAK," she amended, as she passed through the door and walked beside him down the corridor. "After the Ayatollah came to power, the government got rid of some of the most prominent members of the Shah's secret police, but they kept on as many as they could, doing pretty much the same job, watching many of the same people even, just for different bosses. I'm pretty sure Arash was sent to Jordan as part of SAVAK's covert program to destabilize Iraq in the Seventies. When the Iranian government changed, I bet he was happy to take the new regime's money for the same work, as well as providing support for the Iran-backed extremists in Lebanon. Jordan really is a nice place to live, far better than living under the mullahs – at least for an 'independent thinker' like our Arash."

They reached the door. Wilcox opened it. The little camp's perimeter fence was ten steps away. A locked gate was set into it, a means of entrance and egress that bypassed the facility's 'official' gate. Just outside, Forstner waited at the wheel of an ancient open Jeep. Wilcox said, "You think they can turn him?"

"Are you kidding?" They walked toward the gate. "He'd sell his mother for a sandwich. Once it's made clear to him that he lost his chance to bluff his way free, he'll work for the Devil to get out of here. The Company will give him another carful of cash and send him across the border, to do the same job he was going to do for Iran. Any business in Iraq where large sums of cash trade hands is going to attract criminals and insurgents. He'll let them 'subvert' him and use his business to launder money and make purchases, probably smuggle goods as well."

They reached the gate. Nicole, waiting for the sergeant to produce a key and open the gate, brushed lightly against him; Wilcox fumbled his key ring and nearly dropped it. "He'll gain their confidence, learn who they are and how they operate – including the Iran-backed groups we know are active there. He'll secretly work against them with influence and misinformation, telling us everything he learns and delivering plausible BS to his former masters in Iran. He'll probably even enjoy it."

They passed through the gate and locked it behind them. She looked at the Jeep's rear seat, as if trying to decide how to get up into the doorless little vehicle.

Feeling a strange excitement – _Jesus, Wilcox, is it that long since you touched a woman?_ He offered her a hand, palm-up. She reached for it; her hand hesitated a finger's width over his before placing it in his grip. He felt an odd shock – not electric, more a sudden rush of sensation. His breath squeezed out in a soft huff as the supple softness of her hand expanded in his mind to a momentary flash of her naked in his arms. Then she stepped up into the vehicle and released him, leaving him feeling a little disoriented and shocky.

If Nicole noticed, she gave no sign. "The next one, I'll need delivered to Camp No," she said. "But first … Is there someplace to eat around here?"


	2. Salvation

Sardar Ayoubi, or Detainee Four Sixty, as he was called here, shuffled carefully through the entrance to the interrogation building. No other gait was possible: his ankles were shackled with less than half a meter of chain connecting them, his wrists were locked to a chain around his waist, and a pair of guards held his upper arms, steadying and steering him. This last was necessary because he had a black bag over his head and was walking blind. It was all SOP for Sardar: though he'd been here a hundred times, he'd never seen the building from the outside – or inside, for that matter, until he reached his destination and the door was shut behind him.

Sardar counted steps. Six more, and he would be turned left, and the quality of the echoes would change as they entered the hallway leading to the interrogation rooms. Ten more would bring him to the first of the doors leading to a room. Sardar had been led to six different rooms here in the three years he had been detained: their doors lay at ten, twenty, and thirty steps on the left, and at fifteen, twenty-five, and thirty-five on the right. Except for the farthest, the rooms were exactly the same, blank-walled and windowless, furnished with a table and two chairs; the only difference was in how long it took to reach them. The farthest room, however, was equipped for 'enhanced interrogation techniques', and if he ever visited _that_ room again, it would be too bloody soon. And that was why he counted his steps every time he was led down this hall.

The hands on his left arm tugged backward as the ones on the right urged him into a left-hand turn. Sardar turned, unresisting as always, and the guards' boots echoed down the long hall, scuffing the floor as they kept step with their prisoner. Ten steps, then twenty, twenty-five….

The grip on his arms tightened, and he realized he was dragging his feet.

Thirty steps, and now the hands on his biceps were almost lifting his heels off the floor.

_Allah the Merciful, the Benificent…_

It took a moment to realize that his captors had taken more than thirty-five steps. Sardar resumed his count as the men continued to half-drag him forward: forty, forty-five. Fifty. At fifty-five, they halted and turned him right. One of the guards let go of him. Sardar sensed the other guard's tension through the hands gripping his bicep. "Behave yourself," the man said in a low voice as the doorknob turned and the latch clicked.

_Who am I meeting, the bloody President? _ He didn't say it out loud; even a simple affirmative would have been against the rules, and a smart comment would have cost him the inch-thick foam mattress covering the metal shelf that was his bed.

The door was opened. He felt a little puff of cool air on his hands and at the base of his throat, the only exposed skin on his body. The hand on his arm urged him through.

He felt carpet under his feet instead of concrete. The echoes in this room were different, muffled. He was led several steps inside, chivvied sideways, and told to sit, the big hand still gripping his arm and guiding him down. The chair was padded, not one of the usual heavy wooden ones with the shackle-scarred arms, and he sank into the cushion with his hands in his lap.

The bag was whisked from his head, and he beheld a houri.

...

Wilcox paused at the door to the 'guest' office at the end of the hall where, as instructed, he had brought Four Sixty instead of to an interview room. Questioning a detainee in a room with no cameras was a breach of protocol and security both, but he had been ordered to follow this agent's instructions to the letter. No doubt this was part of Nicole's 'different methods', he thought, and wondered what other surprises she might be preparing for the little raghead.

"Behave yourself," he found himself saying, even though Four Sixty was fully restrained, and had never offered any physical resistance even when he wasn't. Physically passive he might be, but Wilcox could see a deep and abiding anger in his eyes, and, though he was a favorite of the visiting interrogators, they never seemed happy when they were through with him. The sergeant thought it was just a matter of time before the right combination of stressors sent the kid off the rails.

Wilcox opened the door and gently pushed the detainee through. Keeping him firmly in control occupied all of the sergeant's attention until the kid was settled into the chair. Then he glanced at the figure standing behind the desk, and he almost forgot the subject in the chair beside him.

Nicole had changed out of her uniform into another, of sorts: a woman's power suit, light gray jacket and trousers, pastel blue button-front shirt with the top three fasteners undone. A pendant stone gleamed three inches below the hollow of her throat, suspended from a fine silver chain. The outfit looked like designer stuff, form-fitting, perfectly tailored and expensive as hell. It made Nicole look older, a successful young woman who knew her stuff but wasn't averse to using her looks to ease her way up the career ladder.

She nodded at the detainee, and Wilcox removed the head bag. The kid stared at Nicole as if he had never seen a woman before. The sergeant could sympathize: he'd seen plenty of women, but never one quite like this.

Four Sixty dropped his eyes and stared at the carpet. Nicole gestured toward him. "Take those things off him."

"If he's unshackled, two men have to stay in the room, Miss."

Nicole looked at Wilcox with a cool expression that made him feel as if he'd just farted. "Sergeant, where on earth do you think he'll run to?"

Uncomfortably, he said, "He might try… taking you hostage."

"If he does, shoot me first. I insist." She looked pointedly at the boy's leg and arm restraints.

Wilcox wearily inserted keys into the locks, popped them, and gathered them up. The boy rubbed his wrists as they always did, even though the shackles hadn't been tight enough to chafe. "Anything else?"

"Something to eat would be nice. I haven't had a bite since breakfast."

Wilcox blinked at the lie. He looked from her to the kid, who seemed uncharacteristically reluctant to meet his interrogator's eyes. She was going to eat in front of him? He was pretty sure that was an insult, especially with her being a woman. An attempt to put him in his place, maybe? "Sure. What do you want?"

"Anything you've got, as long as it's kosher."

He blinked again and looked at the detainee, whose head had snapped up briefly to stare at her before dropping back down. The sergeant said, "Kosher?"

She nodded, face serious. "I won't insist on rabbinical supervision. Just be sure it isn't anything unclean. Knock before you come in with it, please."

…

Sardar sat with his hands in his lap, staring at the floor between his feet and the big desk. _A Jewish interrogator – maybe even from Mossad. Allah preserve me._

She said, "This is the part where I'm supposed to flip a page or two in your file and say something melodramatic." Her voice was like birdsong, or chimes, or the voice of Heaven. "Actually, I haven't read it. It's way too thick for a file on someone who hasn't told us anything, which tells me it's full of useless filler and unsupported opinions."

He heard the chair behind the desk creak; he swallowed as he imagined her hips shifting in the seat. "I'm not going to jerk you around, Sardar. I'm here because nobody else has gotten anything out of you. But nobody believes your story, either, and they assume, therefore, that what you're withholding must be very good stuff. And since you were raised in the West, you're perceived as having turned on your host culture, which makes you a sort of traitor as well as a terrorist. That earns you some special treatment in the press - and in here."

A pause, as if she was waiting for a response. He didn't dare speak. She went on, "I'm not sure that's the case. As I said, I'm not going to jerk you around. Convincing me won't get you out of here. But I may be able to persuade certain people that trying to break you is counterproductive."

Bitterness overwhelmed his fear. "So, you're offering to stop torturing me if I tell you what you want to know?" _The same offer I've been given every day since my first visit to Room Thirty-five._

"I don't know if you have a single scrap of information I want. I'm only offering to listen honestly to what you have to say." He heard the chair creak as she leaned forward. "Talk to me. Tell me the story like it's the first time, and I'll listen like I'm the first to hear it. Then we'll see where things go from there."

_Well_, he thought,_ this is a new approach._ _And I thought they'd tried every one imaginable. _Sardar had been sat down with all sorts of interrogators - teams and individuals, even a few women, though none like this. Some of them had been in masquerade. The fake mullah had been laughable, but some of the others had been much better, like the 'human rights worker' and the one who had claimed to be from the British Embassy. Their questions always tripped them up, though; they simply weren't interested enough in the ones that the people they were pretending to be would want answers for. After all that, presenting him with an honest and sympathetic intelligence operative should be the biggest stretch of his credulity ever.

And would have been, if this woman were not so…

One of the uniformed interrogators, a woman who'd been hostile and aggressive from the start, had grown angry with his 'attitude' – his stubborn refusal to confess to crimes he hadn't committed, and to divulge information he didn't have - and had ordered him shackled to the chair and then sent the guard from the room, leaving Sardar alone with her. Still looking at Sardar like she was a dog about to bite, she'd committed various personal indignities on him that might have had an Afghan hill tribesman howling for mercy rather than bear the shame. But Sardar, being a city boy and raised in the West, had merely endured it, praying silently to Allah and trying with mixed success to restrain, or at least ignore, his reactions to her handling of him. Eventually the woman had tired of her sport, restored his clothing and hers, and called for the guard to take him away.

But sometimes he still had dreams about that woman's hands on him, and the sensations they'd aroused, that brought him to his knees in prayer in the middle of the night. The scent of her breasts as she'd pressed them into his face was an especially stubborn memory.

And one glance at this young woman had brought all those memories to mind, substituting her face and body for the interrogator's. He couldn't look at her for two seconds without imagining what she looked like under her clothes, and the feel of her under his hands. He stared down at his soft slip-on shoes and tried to think of a prayer.

"Let me help you start," she said. "You're British, right?"

"Yes," he said to the floor. "You know that. I was born and raised in Southampton."

"And what were you doing in Afghanistan when you were picked up?" Music couldn't fill a room with more beauty than her voice.

He swallowed. He noticed that the carpet squares glued to the floor were each exactly the same pattern, but they'd been turned about when they were laid to create variety. "I was trying to get out of the country, not rushing to join the fight."

"Why were you there to begin with?"

"I've got family there."

"You said you were born in England. How close are you to your family in Afghanistan?"

_Here it comes_, he thought. "Never met them before. My parents sent me on holiday to the old country for my eighteenth. I was supposed to be gone for a month or two." _And I haven't seen my family since. I turned eighteen in this place, and twenty-one as well, unnoticed by anyone in the world._ He braced himself for the predictable questions to follow: who did he meet there, and what did they tell him? What was he supposed to do when he got back to England? What contact information was he given? What did he know of Taliban and al-Qaeda activity?

"Does that happen a lot in transplanted Afghan families? Parents sending their kids halfway around the world to visit relatives they never met?"

It wasn't the first time he'd been asked that question. But the girl's tone of voice was light and conversational, and, for the first time, Sardar thought maybe his questioner wasn't trying to catch him in a lie. "If they can afford it, yeah. It's not something every kid gets like a bar mitzvah. And it's just for the boys."

"Bar mitzvahs are boys-only too, Sardar," she said quietly.

"Oh. Sorry." He didn't understand why he said it. He kept his eyes on the floor.

"Don't be. I'm not Jewish."

He lifted his chin, but brought it back down before his eyes reached the edge of the desk; he had the strangest feeling that, if he looked on her face again, he'd never be able to pull his eyes away.

She went on, "I just wanted them to bring you something fit to eat. I hear they play games with your food sometimes. Jewish and Muslim dietary laws are similar, aren't they?"

He cleared his throat. "Well, at least they won't pour bacon grease on it. Thank you."

"You're welcome. Is it because I'm not properly covered? Is that why you won't look at me?" She waited a moment; when he didn't answer, she went on. "You were raised in England. Surely you saw plenty of girls who weren't dressed according to Sharia. Even Muslim ones."

He didn't understand why he spoke; he hadn't intended to. It just came out on its own. "I can't. I'm too weak."

"I don't understand."

It's been too long since I've looked on a woman. Especially one like you. I know it's not my bloody imagination. You look like a page-two girl." He thought he was done, but something prompted him to add, "I'm sorry. But, when I look in your eyes, I feel far from God."

"Hm. I've had men tell me that looking in my eyes makes them feel like they're in Heaven."

"Lustful thoughts are a tool of the Devil. A woman's beauty is a peril to a man's soul. It's not the woman's fault, but she leads man into unclean thoughts anyway."

"So that's why they cover? To protect men's virtue?"

"And their own."

"Because, if she doesn't, she's doing the Devil's work?"

"Western girls don't know any better, and they've been taught that covering up is demeaning."

"And even worse, that they should glory in the thoughts they instill in men. Our culture must seem perverse to a Muslim not raised in it." Her voice drew closer. "Do you see it that way?"

"I see why I drove my parents crazy with worry, back in Southampton. And why they sent me to the old country to meet family."

"And maybe a girl, one with a proper sense of decorum and virtue?"

"Yeh." He could see her pants legs now, the last foot or so of them anyway, and her shoes. The shoes were a working style: not like the boots the soldiers wore, but square-toed and sensible, shoes that could almost belong to a man. But they were too small, and he knew too well the feet inside them belonged to a woman. He imagined them bare –somehow he was certain that they would be perfectly formed and immaculately pedicured, a sensual treat for his hands - and squeezed his eyes shut until his vision blurred when he opened them. "I can't even look at you without…" He trailed off, feeling the heat rise in his neck and ears.

"Which isn't meant to be a compliment. I'm sorry, really, but there's not much I can do about the way I look. I doubt throwing a tarp over my head would make any difference to you now." Her hands came into sight, smooth graceful hands, pale as milk, with pink-painted nails, presenting a book on a snowy kerchief. A _Q'uran_. "I can't leave you alone in here, my authority won't stretch that far. But if you want to pray, I'll go behind the desk and turn my back. Is it enough?"

He took it in both hands, careful not to touch her. "The Law makes allowances for prisoners, or Faithful under other kinds of duress." After a moment he added, "Thank you."

"It's an English translation. I understand that means technically it's not a real Koran, because it's not written in Arabic. It's all I could get on short notice. But I wasn't sure you were allowed one of your own."

"We are now." _And the guards leave them alone. Not like the first days, when they made us watch them step on them and drop them into the toilets._ Sardar turned the cover. "Mine's just like this, actually. I don't read Arabic."

"Like you said, God makes allowances." He heard her move away. "Pray for strength, Sardar. Pray for the strength to look on me and talk to me, and I'm sure it'll come."

With trembling hands, Sardar opened the holy book, and turned to a favorite passage, one that he had returned to many times to take his mind off the tumult as a team of MPs rushed into a nearby cell to settle a quarrel between a guard and another prisoner.

_Righteousness does not consist of turning your faces towards the East and the West. But righteous is he who believes in God, and the Last Day, and the angels, and the Scripture, and the prophets. Who gives money, though dear, to near relatives, and orphans, and the needy, and the homeless, and the beggars, and for the freeing of slaves; those who perform the prayers, and pay the obligatory charity, and fulfill their promise when they promise, and patiently persevere in the face of persecution, hardship, and in the time of conflict. These are the sincere; these are the pious._

He slid forward, and his knees dropped to the carpeted floor. _And wherever you come from, turn your face towards the Sacred Mosque. This is the truth from your Lord, and God is not heedless of what you do._ But he had no idea which direction…

"Right," the girl said quietly. "A little more than a quarter turn."

He shifted clumsily, eyes on the floor, and touched his forehead to the carpet. _Just as We sent to you a messenger from among you, who recites Our revelations to you, and purifies you, and teaches you the Book and wisdom, and teaches you what you did not know._

_So remember Me, and I will remember you. And thank Me, and do not be ungrateful._

_O you who believe! Seek help through patience and prayers. God is with the steadfast._

The Book was closed between Sardar's hands; he silently recited from memory, honed by a hundred readings.

And, after some unguessable time, he realized that his fear had drained away, replaced by a sense of peace and reassurance.

He raised his eyes. The girl sat behind the desk, eyes downcast, not looking at him. She was still perilously beautiful, but that knowledge seemed remote and objective, no longer a dark magnet pulling him toward her.

The girl sensed his regard, and raised her eyes to meet his. He was somehow unsurprised to see that eyes were a rather exotic color, a sort of violet, quite lovely. A woman must be of exceptionally good heart, he thought, to be so good-looking yet so demure. Even though no true believer, she was clearly a child of The Book, and worthy of God's favor. How could such a creature have come to him at this time, in this place, if not as a gift from God?

Had he been sent a measure of deliverance – not from this place, that was too much to ask, but deliverance of the spirit? After years of unrelenting routine and discomfort, facing the cynical eyes of the interrogators and enduring the unrelenting hostility of the guards - hostility that freshened each time one of those _bain chodas_ in the adjoining cells shouted one of their stupid slogans at him or tried to draw him into their little conspiracies, as if he was one of them – had he finally been set down before someone here who was capable of seeing another human being on the other side of the table? He focused on the girl again. She met his gaze: her eyes were patient, unjudging… and expectant.

He took a breath and let it out. "Where do we start?"

Her smile was like breaking dawn. "Something pleasant. Home. What's it like, growing up Afghani in Southampton?"

….

"It's time to talk about this." The girl reached into the folder and pulled out several page-sized digital photos. Sardar knew without looking at them what they were. It occurred to him that, for someone who hadn't read his file, she seemed to know her way around it. "I suppose you know how much this incident did to your credibility."

The pictures were screencaps with the logo of a jihadist website in a bottom corner. Several men stood outside in bright sunshine, firing automatic weapons at makeshift targets: an old truck, a window in a wall – a mannequin in desert camouflage uniform. One of the men was Sardar. Another picture showed him firing from cover behind a rubble wall, as if training to fight in an urban setting. In a third he sat at a food-laden table, eating and conversing in the company of several important-looking men. Finally, a picture of him bent over a map table, seeming to be making plans. Even though Sardar had been expecting this, his heart sank. "I was tricked and coerced into being in that video," he said wearily, knowing he wouldn't be believed.

"How did it happen?" She asked. There was no sarcasm or suspicion in her voice. Something must have shown on his face, because she went on, "I offered to listen to you, remember? Tell me how you ended up at this camp playing soldier."

Sardar gathered his thoughts and memories. "It was a week, maybe ten days after we had gone into the back country to see some cousins. The cities are all right, but as soon as you get to the end of the paved roads, you step back in time a thousand years. Absolutely nothing to do. Most people don't even know how to read. I was bored out of my mind.

"One of my cousins introduced me to a friend of his, a pleasant sort who offered to take me for an outing and meet some friends. I took him up on it. We drove in his car for half a day – he actually pulled over and refilled the gas tank from jerrycans in the trunk. I had no idea where I was, and I was starting to think I'd been kidnapped. Finally we arrived at this tent city built around some kind of old fort.

"His 'friends' turned out to be an Islamist militant group. They had ideas about bringing holy jihad to Syria and Iraq. Nutters all, but the way the white showed all around their eyes when they talked about restoring the ascendancy of the Faith told you they didn't believe in friendly disagreements. I ate with their leaders while they quizzed me about living in England. Any time I answered a question, they looked at one another as if they thought I was lying. I thought they might kill me for a spy or some such.

"Instead, they put a gun in my hand and took me out to play with it. First and only time I've ever touched one of the bloody things. I don't think I even hit any of the targets. I nodded and smiled and pretended to be having fun, while I tried not to shit myself. I didn't know they were recording it all. But really, it wouldn't have made any difference, I was that worried for my life. I just wanted to go home, and if pretending to be convinced that all that shite they were slinging made sense, that's what I was going to do."

"So they didn't provide you with a contact list, or money, or instructions?"

"No."

"And they didn't try to convince you to stay?"

"They did at first, but then they gave up on that too, I suppose. My cousin took me home at sunset, driving for hours down dirt roads as dark as the inside of a sack. On the way, he made me promise half a dozen times that I wouldn't tell anyone about the camp, or where it was." He scoffed. "As if I could ever have found it again. I didn't see three road signs the whole trip." He waited a moment. "Aren't you going to ask?"

Nicole smiled and shook her head. "By now it's gone. Whoever you met there, I'm sure they didn't tell you anything that would be useful." She tapped a fingernail on the report, looking down at it; Sardar was now sure that, all her dismissals aside, she had studied it, and was familiar with anything of significance that it contained. "You were turned in to Allied authorities four weeks later, part of a group of reported terrorists. What happened there?"

"What _happened_? Two weeks after that little outing, some bloody maniacs flew a pair of planes into the towers in New York. We didn't hear about it right off – I was still visiting relatives in the back country – and by the time we did, the borders were closed and the bombs were about to fall."

"You keep saying 'we'."

"My family didn't send me off alone. I had two mates with me, Yama and Asad." He scoffed. "I guess their parents were trying to keep them out of trouble too."

"Where are they now?"

"Yama is here, I think. I used to see him sometimes, back when they kept us kenneled outside like dogs. But not since we moved indoors."

"And Asad?"

"Don't know. We three got separated trying to reach the border. Things were mad there after Nine-Eleven. Rumors were flying about everything, and the wilder they were, the faster they traveled. There were people going round saying it was the end of the world, that the Americans were going to nuke us. Armed men were riding around in trucks firing their guns in the air and shouting slogans, trying to stir things up. Someone would accuse a neighbor of working for the Americans, and they'd drag him through the street and beat him. Most people were just keeping close to home, afraid to step out, but some tried to get out of the country.

"We were traveling with this bunch of refugees, a sort of column. Everyone was on foot; there wasn't any petrol to be had by regular folk by then, so they just abandoned their cars when they ran dry. This pickup truck full of armed men came chasing up the road after us. I don't know to this day what it was about, whether they were Taliban or Northern Alliance of just arseholes, but they plowed into the column, firing into the crowd and scattering everybody who didn't fall. That was the last I saw of Asad. For all I know, he's dead."

She nodded sympathetically. "What sort of truck?"

"Full size, white. Toyota, I think."

"Were they wearing anything that looked like a uniform? Armbands, even?"

"No. Well…" He reconsidered. "Most of them had a kerchief. Red and white check, reminded me of a tablecloth at a picnic. Some of them wore it on their heads, others on their necks."

"You said they fired into the crowd. What sort of weapons did they have?"

He shook his head. "I only touched a gun once my whole life. I can't tell one from another."

"You may only have held a gun once, but you've watched enough television to know what an M-16 and an AK-47 look like."

"I was running for my life, miss." He thought. "If I had to guess, I'd say some of the rifles were those Russian things with the wooden stocks and grips, but they had some other ones too. I know they didn't sound all the same when they were shooting at us."

She nodded and removed a folded map from her little bag and spread it out on the desk, nearly covering it. "Can you show me where it happened? I'll help you."

Wilcox, standing just outside in the corridor, started at the sound of laughter coming through the door – a little birdsong laugh that surely was Nicole's, and another voice, the detainee's. His eyes and Forstner's met. Reflex made him turn the knob and look inside.

They stood side by side, their backs to him, boardroom hottie and orange-jumpsuited bad boy with a chain still circling his waist. They were leaning over the front of the desk. The boy was murmuring something, touching a big map with his finger. They both stopped and turned to look at him as if he was intruding.

He said, unnecessarily, "Everything okay in here?"

"Just fine, Sergeant," she said. "Bring the food in when it arrives." _And stay out till then_, her eyes said.

When the door closed, she touched a spot on the map and went on, "So this is where you were picked up?"

"I think so," Sardar said. "Half a day after that shoot-up on the road. Another truck – might have been the same one, I suppose, just with different people in it. I was walking down the road alone, and it came up behind. Trying to avoid them would have been pointless, there was no place to hide, not a bush or a building in sight. They pulled up, and one of them said, 'get in.' I was sure they weren't offering me a lift, but the way they held their guns made me think I should do what they told me. An hour or so later, we went through the gates of what I took to be a refugee camp." His mouth twisted. "When I saw the American uniforms, I thought I was finally getting a bit of luck. I actually _thanked_ the bellends who'd brought me in."

"Until the questioning began."

"I wasn't really questioned, not right away. I started out in a pen with a mob, a mix of slogan-shouters and refugees. I went up to the wire and told the guard I was a Brit. Ten minutes later, I was in another pen, a smaller one with just two other people - a Kraut and an Afghan who spoke English. I talked to them, and found out the German had been picked up on the road as well. The Afghani had been snatched right out of his house.

"The Afghani – he was a teacher – he'd been in custody for four days. He told us, 'You're only here because they know you speak English. Don't tell them you're foreign nationals.' I told him it was too late for that. He looked at the guard, who was watching us as if he thought we were about to rush him. 'That's too bad,' he said. 'The American President has been going on and on about how the Taliban are recruiting Muslim extremists from all over the world and training them as terrorists.'

"I thought about my little holiday in the countryside, and the day trip that had taken me to that camp. 'Do you think it's true?' I asked him.

"'I think it's bullshit,' he said. 'Just an excuse to show the Muslim world what happens when you side with somebody who pisses off the United States.' He gave the guard a glance, then he went on, 'But what do I know? I'm just a schoolteacher. I don't have a picture of Bin Laden hanging from my rearview mirror, like some West Bank cab driver.' That sounded a bit well-traveled for an Afghani schoolteacher. But I decided not to ask any more questions.

"After a bit, a pair of guards came to the gate and beckoned me over. If I had had any doubt things could get worse, that ended when they handcuffed me." He paused. "Do I have to go on about what happened after that?"

"Not if you don't want to," she said. "Unless you think your account differs from the official version."

He scoffed. "'Official version.'"

"You know what I mean. According to the official report, you were brought in by native auxiliaries tasked with rounding up stray Taliban or Al-Qaida fighters. They claimed you threw down a rifle and surrendered when they approached you." She lowered her lashes. "Nobody thought to ask them to produce the weapon, even though it was unlikely they would have left it behind. When you were brought before a screening officer, you said you were British and tried to claim immunity."

He sighed. "I gave him my name, said I was a British citizen, and told him I didn't belong there. I asked him to contact the British Embassy. I thought all I would have to do was prove I was a tourist, and they'd send me home." He took another deep breath and let it out. "The next day, I was riding in a helicopter with a bag on my head."

Knuckles rapped on the door, and Sergeant Wilcox entered, tray in hand.

…

"Well, how was it?" Nicole asked a few minutes later. "You seemed to enjoy it."

"The food was nothing special," he said. "But it seems forever since I've been served a meal that didn't come in a Styrofoam box. Thank you."

"It's very hard here, I know," she said quietly. "Do you have friends, at least?"

"I'm in solitary confinement," he reminded her. "A couple of the other inmates talk to me in Pashto, though they have to shout to be heard, and the guards usually quiet us pretty quick. But even if we were free to, they're not easy to talk to. I think they're both graduates of a camp like the one I visited."

"Nothing in common, then."

"Just a language, and our religion, and where we are now."

"Why do they even try, I wonder? Just because they can talk without their captors overhearing?" She added, "You'd think at least a few of the guards would understand Arabic, but that's the U.S. educational system for you."

He scoffed. "Oh, there are plenty of light-skinned people back home who don't speak anything but English. There are blokes who pride themselves on their ignorance wherever you go."

"I'm not going to do it. But I think you should know that, being an infidel Western girl and not properly brought up, I have a very strong urge to hug you and tell you things are going to get better."

"I don't dare hope. But thank you."

An hour after bringing in the tray, Wilson heard the door open. Nicole peeked through. "We're done." In a lower voice she said, "Be gentle."

He and Forstner came in, shackles in hand; the boy was already seated, waiting unsmiling for his leg irons. When they were secure, he presented his wrists so that they could be cuffed to the chain around his waist. When the sergeant produced the head bag, Nicole said, "Wait." She knelt in front of the seated man. "I can't make you any guarantees, Sardar. But I'll speak for you to whomever I can."

He nodded, silent in the presence of the uniformed men, a detainee once again. Wilcox slipped the bag over his head.

…

"This has to be the oldest Jeep in the US military's fleet," Nicole said from the back seat of the little CJ7 as it started up the steep rise leading away from the camp and towards her quarters.

"A lot of bases have museums," Wilcox answered from the shotgun seat, turning to look at her. "I bet there's more than a few MJ3s on display. But I suppose it could be the oldest daily driver. That said, it doesn't belong to Uncle Sam. It's mine."

"Really." She smiled. "Were you inspired by all that Fifties-era Detroit steel on the other side of the wire?"

"Never gave it a thought. I just like old Jeeps. Simple transpo, easy to keep running. It's really just a big rugged golf cart. But it's all you need around here." He scoffed. "I know somebody who bought a '68 Mustang and brought it here. To a place with a road network that mostly looks like a bunch of nature trails. Doubt he ever gets it up to thirty."

"Hey, it's a convertible," Forstner said. "I get a lot of action with that car."

"_Really,_" Nicole said, turning her smile on the driver.

He blushed. "Well, not lately."

"I'm sure Corporal Wickes would be relieved to hear that." Wilcox said to Nicole, "Girlfriend. Recent acquisition."

Nicole's smile faded, but her tone stayed light. "Is she camp personnel, then?"

"Yeah," he said. "Guard force. She's due to transfer out in August."

"Not much time."

The grade steepened, and he downshifted with a momentary grinding of gears. "Guess we need to make the most of the time we have."

"That you do," she said. "Max, take the rest of the day off."

"Ma'am?"

"I said, go do something else. Hit the NCO Club. Visit your girlfriend, if she's off duty. Take a nap. Just tell us where to drop you off." She turned her gaze on Wilcox. "The sergeant and I aren't going to be doing anything else today that we'll need help with."

…

"How did you get him talking?" Wilcox asked half an hour later.

They had ventured over the ridge, after a brief stop at her quarters to change back into uniform, into the largely non-military section on the outskirts of the base which contained a number of retail establishments. They were presently sharing a table at a franchise coffee shop. Over the rim of his coffee cup, Wilcox watched his principal nibbling a sandwich while he waited to see if she would answer. He wasn't entirely sure she would, but he needed to still the crazy thoughts whirling through his head, thoughts of her bent over the desk in the interrogation area with her trousers down around her ankles, while the detainee...

"It was easy, really." She tucked her black hair behind her ear with her two middle fingers, making it shimmer with eye-catching highlights. "I just convinced him God wanted him to."

He blinked at that, but let it pass. "You buy his story?"

She looked across the table at him, and again he felt trapped like a fly on a glue strip by her eyes. "Men don't lie to me, Brian, unless I let them." She raised the paper cup to her lips and sipped. "He's just what he always claimed to be. A shiftless working-class kid from Southampton who didn't care about his ethnic heritage and ignored his parents' lectures on piety. They sent him to the home country as a last attempt to make a proper Muslim out of him, and it didn't take. After a couple weeks, he was bored stiff, chafing under the restrictions of Afghan society, and eager to get back home so he could resume life as a Brit. The jihadists approached him, as they did every foreign Muslim in-country, but they saw how lukewarm his faith was, so they settled for making a propaganda tool of him by video recording him at a local camp."

She opened another sugar packet into her coffee and stirred it in. "The war caught him still in the country. He and his friends fled for the border, looking for rescue by coalition forces. On the way, he was taken by Northern Alliance bullyboys and turned over to the Americans, solely to collect a bounty being offered for captured 'Taliban fighters'. He never should have come here."

"So, who are you going to talk to for him, then?"

"Nobody." She returned her attention to her sandwich. "However he got here, he's too valuable now to ever let go."

He frowned. "Eh?"

She swallowed a bite and said patiently, "He's praying five times a day now, Brian. Not just putting his nose to the carpet, actually talking with his God. He couldn't find his faith back in the old country, but he embraced it here. It's all he's got. The torture, isolation and persecution fed it and strengthened it. As a result, he's become the jihadists' poster boy. He's proof that you can't extinguish the flame of Islam with temptations and easy living, merely bank the fire until a fresh wind ignites it again." She smiled. "I'm quoting one of their sites. Extremist recruiters worldwide are pointing to him as proof that the West will never truly accept Islam, and that its policy of 'religious freedom' is a farce - even its own Muslim citizens will be casualties in its war against the Faith. He's confirmation that it's us against them. It would be insane to turn him out of here and let those people get their hands on him.

"And the hardcases in the camp here treat him like a mascot. He's the lost lamb returned to the fold. They all encourage him to stay strong, to keep resisting, to keep the Faith. He still rejects their agenda, but that only increases their trust. They tell him things, just hints, but more than they should to an outsider, trying to convince him he's part of something big and historic, that he's not suffering in vain. In just the time I spoke with him, he gave me enough intel to shut down two operations in Iraq and Pakistan, stuff he didn't even realize he knows. I'm not going to jeopardize a source like that with preferential treatment." She finished her cup. "Actually, the severity of his treatment should be stepped up for a little while after I leave, to reassure the others he didn't tell me anything. Move him into Five with the hardcases for a week or so."

"That's-" He caught himself.

"Cold? Yeah." She sipped her coffee. "This isn't bad. You hear so many bad things about Starbuck's. Guess you guys get the best." She set the cup down. "You're one of the good ones, Brian. It takes talent to be a good jailer." At his scoff she said, "I mean it. You have to be a special person to be able to deprive a fellow human being of his most basic rights without dehumanizing him. Most people can't do it. They either fraternize, which is dangerous and often results in the guard ending up behind bars too, or they treat their prisoners like animals, which is dangerous in other ways."

She picked her cup up again. As she touched her lips to the rim, she said, "Brian, have you ever seen a guard abuse a detainee? I'm not talking about 'enhanced interrogation.' I mean, beating him in his cell, humiliating him, doing a mindfuck on him." She looked up. "Don't bother to deny it. I see your answer in every line of your posture. You don't like it, but you feel helpless to do anything about it. The brass looks the other way, and you won't go outside of channels. But someone will, someday. Keep your distance, Brian, physically and emotionally."

She slid her cup aside and leaned close; he caught a hint of her perfume. "If this facility is ever closed down, it won't be because the guards torture detainees for information. But there's going to quite be a stir someday, when the press gets their hands on a smuggled video that shows the guards torturing detainees just for the hell of it. I said the rules here are whatever we want them to be, and that's true. Getting information out of these people is vital to our security and interests; it's the duty of everyone here to facilitate that, even at the expense of our guests' comfort and peace of mind. You can get away with some very questionable activities in pursuit of that objective – but only if you don't enjoy the work too much." She leaned back. "I'm done with work for the day. What do people do for recreation around here?"

He said slowly, "A lot of things. You can do anything at Gitmo that you can do at any other military base. Except go into town. So they try to bring hometown USA to the base. We have plenty of sports fields, a movie theater, restaurants." He gestured around him. "Even a few fast-food joints."

"What about beaches? You must have."

"Quite a few," he admitted. "A pool, even. But the nicest ones all face the Bay, not the ocean, and they're full of base personnel. I thought you wanted to keep a low profile."

"No secluded little places?"

"Well, the beaches on the camp side aren't good for swimming, just wading and sunbathing." He eyed the girl's creamy skin: she didn't look like the sunbathing type.

"I don't tan easily," she said, seeming to read his mind, "but I don't burn easily either. A little SPF thirty, and I'm good." She smiled. "That, and a suit."

He flashed on her as she had appeared at the door of the helo, in a summery outfit that put her figure nicely on display, and he couldn't stop his eyes from dropping momentarily, trying to see through the bulky fabric of the uniform. "Well, I doubt the X has anything you'd want to wear, but there's a little strip mall with a clothes shop not too far from here."

"That's the spirit." She was still smiling. "It just doesn't seem right to visit an island paradise like this without getting sand between your toes, don't you think?"

.,.

"I have to say, when somebody talks about beaches in the Caribbean, this isn't what comes to mind." Nicole stood ten yards out from shore, in water that rose from mid-calf to cover her knees with each foamy little wave. She turned to regard the rocky cliffs just thirty yards to either side. "Do they truck the sand in?"

Wilcox, standing on the beach and still in uniform, pulled his attention from the girl's bikini-clad backside. "I think if they trucked sand in, they'd deliver something better than this." The soil between the cliffs was coarse and gritty, interspersed with dark fist-sized rocks. "This is a runoff channel when it rains. I think the sand washes down from the hills." He added, "There's a better beach just a mile east of here. Still no sand, but there are deck chairs, bathrooms, picnic area. But it's probably not empty, and you said you wanted privacy."

"There are some beautiful beaches down the coast from Havana. Sand like sugar, palm trees, surf like a soft blanket. Your pick of lodgings, anything from driftwood shacks to luxury hotels built before the Revolution." She swirled her foot around in the waves. "My Uncle Jack used to tell me stories. He lived in Havana for a while, and traveled all over the island."

Wilcox did some mental figuring. If the guy had been banging around Cuba before the Revolution… "Is he still alive?"

"Oh, yeah. But he moves around a lot. We don't talk much anymore." She turned toward him. "He's not ninety years old. He was in Cuba _after_ Castro took over. You might say spook stuff is the family business." Her eyes drifted to the cliff tops again. "Has anybody here been on the other side of the wire?"

"Every day," he told her.

"I'm serious."

"So am I. Cubans, not Americans," he amended. "The base had a good-sized Cuban workforce before the Revolution – gardeners, clerks, handymen, all kinds of non-essential stuff. When Castro took over, he let them keep coming to work, and we kept paying them. Most of them are retired now, but a couple geezers still go in and out the gate every day."

"Hm. Ever get asylum-seekers show up at the wire? There's a fifty-year-old law automatically granting asylum to Cubans who reach American soil, and this _is_ US territory, at least from our side of the legal argument."

"You saw the woods on the other side of the chainlink. All around the base, a hundred yards beyond the perimeter, the trees give way to dead ground, a minefield surrounded by a fence that's twice the size of ours. It's patrolled by half the Cuban Army. There isn't anybody coming up to the wire."

"This would be a little more fun if I wasn't alone. You should have brought a suit."

"On duty, Nicole." He realized it was the first time he had used her name.

"Hm. So when are you off duty?"

"As long as you're here, I'm not."

She turned to him with a little smile. "Oh, really. So you're at my beck and call, twenty-four-seven?"

He swallowed. "Till you're at your door, and anytime you leave your little cottage."

She seemed about to say something, then changed her mind. "Well, the water's warm enough, anyway." She walked out of the waves, belly flexing, thighs glistening. "I left my towel in the car. Could you…"

"Sure." He pulled his eyes off her, turned away, and hurried to the little Jeep twenty yards up the beach. A moment later, he was back with the oversized beach towel she had purchased with the bikini. "Where do you want it?"

"Well, I'd like to get a little sun, but I don't really want to lay out with you standing over me like a bodyguard."

"It's not a big deal." He spread the towel in the sand and took a few steps away. "I come out here a lot, just to look at the water."

"Hm. Getting away, in your mind at least." She sat down on the towel and began applying sunscreen to her lower legs. "How long have you been here?"

"Three years," he said, watching her hands glide up and down from ankle to knee. "Since the beginning, pretty much."

"You must have volunteered to stay then. Do you like it here?"

"I'm used to it."

"Sounds like it isn't so much about being here, as you don't want to be someplace else." She dispensed a dollop of the creamy white lotion on her thigh and began rubbing it in; Wilcox swallowed. "How do you get along with the ex?"

He blinked and pulled his eyes away from her hands. Slowly he said, "I don't recall ever telling you I was married."

"Guys like you always have ex-wives." The next dollop fell on her belly; the sergeant swallowed as her fingertips slid briefly under her bikini bottom while working it in.

He managed to tear his eyes away from the show, and studied the clifftops. "Guys like me?"

"You know. Mid-thirties, good-looking, conservative, career-wedded. You always try to juggle family life along with a profession. No ring, so the experiment must not have worked out. Any kids?"

"No," he said. "We agreed to wait. Maybe we knew from the beginning that it wasn't going to work."

They talked, Wilcox trying to keep his eyes on the water and the lowering sun instead of the half-naked girl stretched out on the towel nearly at his feet. The conversation drifted from subject to subject, with the interrogator asking most of the questions, and the sergeant doing most of the talking.

On occasion, he would slip in a question of a personal nature, but those queries were usually answered with a vague or cryptic evasion. A few comments from Nicole about her 'Uncle Jack' hinted that he was a former Green Beret who had gotten involved with the CIA after Vietnam. But several attempts to prompt her to give up more information resulted in little more than shrugs. Finally he asked point-blank, "What about your family? Mom and dad still together?"

"Hard to say," she said. "I was orphaned when I was five years old. Car crash."

Stunned, he said, "I'm sorry."

"Don't be. Like I said, I was five. I don't remember them. Uncle Jack is an old Army buddy of my dad's. He kind of looked after us, when he wasn't busy doing other things. Our foster mom is a dragon lady, but she made sure we got a first-rate education and never lacked for a thing."

He remembered Nicole's fascination with the kids at Camp Iguana – had it really been just that morning? Had their isolation struck a chord? How easy had her childhood really been? Then her words registered. "We?"

"Me and my brother, he's a year older." She lifted a knee and stretched out the other leg, toe pointing prettily. "We have a half-sister, but we didn't find out about her until a couple years ago. Different moms."

"Older or younger?"

"Younger by five years. And yes, my parents were together at the time. That's why we didn't know about her, I suppose."

"Hm. You get along?"

"Not really," she said. "Different backgrounds, different interests." She rolled over. "Get my back?"

His breathing roughened. "Sun's almost down."

"I know. Better hurry."

He knelt in the sand next to her and reached for the plastic squeeze bottle. He eyed the girl's skin: soft, creamy, unblemished, looking as if it had never been darkened by the sun. _Vampire's skin._ He shook his head at the strange thought and squirted a small portion of sunscreen into his palm. He leaned over, touched the heel of his hand to the middle of her back…

"Brian," she said softly.

He looked down. His palm was spread across the small of her back. A smear of lotion stretched the length of her spine from the middle of her shoulders to the top of her bikini bottom and over the dimples above her buttocks. He blushed to see that the trail ran under the string across her back.

"You need to spread it out," she went on.

His breathing roughened. Her bikini was the string kind, held together with knots at hips and the middle of her back and the back of her neck. None of them was double-tied. In two seconds, she could be naked and in his arms…

The hand not touching her was wet. He looked at it, and saw that he was still holding the lotion bottle, and had squeezed out half its contents to drip lazily off his fist.

He stood, flicking the oily fluid into the sand. "The sun's gone. We're done here."

"So it seems." She stood, gracefully folding and unfolding herself to rise to her feet. She looked out to sea. "Which way is Jamaica?"

"South." He hadn't meant to, but he found himself coming up behind her and gripping her shoulders, turning her slightly. "That way."

She shivered in his hands. Her skin was cool; he felt goosebumps rise on her upper arms. He bent for the towel, gave it a brief shake, and wrapped it around her. His arms circled her shoulders, drawing her against him.

He felt her soft exhale. "You want me."

It never occurred to him to deny it. "Do you ever meet a man who doesn't?"

"From time to time." She added, "But you're not going to do anything about it."

"No." He dropped his hands, but somehow he couldn't make himself step back. Thoroughly uncomfortable now - from his behavior, or perhaps something else - he stared at the horizon while he searched for words. "I have a feeling that casual sex with you… wouldn't stay casual."

She nodded, unsmiling, and stepped away, wrapping the towel a little tighter around herself. She turned and walked back to the Jeep.

The drive back was quiet. When they came to a stop at the curb in front of Nicole's quarters, she said, "Stay here," and swung her legs out of the doorless little vehicle.

He shook his head and put a foot out. "I can-"

"_No,_" she said, putting up a hand in a halting gesture. She locked eyes. "If you walk me to the door, you'll still be here in the morning. Your reasons for not doing that are better than you know." She pulled her bag out of the back, stuffed the towel into it, and strode up the walk with it over her shoulder, bikini-clad hips rolling enticingly. "Get some rest," she called over her shoulder. "Pick me up at seven."

With that image burned into his vision, Wilcox drove back to the little row of two-room concrete bungalows that included his quarters. Leaving the Jeep out front, he unlocked the door and let himself in, shutting the door behind him.

He surveyed the living area: a space smaller than most hotel rooms, just roomy enough for a single bed, drawers, a closet, and a TV. Another door led to a bathroom so tiny that his knees touched the wall when he sat on the toilet, with a shower stall instead of a tub. The threadbare rug on the painted cement floor needed a good beating. There were no pictures or adornments on the walls, and just one small window above the foot of the bed, covered with cheap thin curtains. The room that had been his private place for nearly three years now looked to him like a prison cell.

Through the wall, softly, he could hear his neighbor playing music, some country western tune with a lot of twangy guitar. Through the opposite wall, he heard the rising hiss of a crowd cheering its team on TV.

He had never felt so alone in his whole life.

He got back in the Jeep, telling himself he just felt like a drive. He wandered the roads, paved and unpaved, that wound through the hills. He crossed the ridge and tooled down the base's streets, cruising like a teenager in his parents' car. He hit a drive-thru, pulled into a lit-up ball field, and ate while he watched a game. He headed back over to the camp side of the peninsula, and parked on a little public beach, the better-attended one that his protectee had shunned, and stared out over the dark water, watching the lights of some officer's pleasure boat cruise by ferrying a load of half-drunk passengers.

And then, as he had known he would, he found himself shutting off the engine at the curb in front of her cottage.

The little house's lights were all off. But a pale yellowish glow came through one of the windows, so faint that he didn't see it until his headlights had been off for a while and given his eyes time to adjust. Was it a night light, or maybe an open fridge door? But he didn't think it was either of those things. His imagination pictured her sitting at the kitchen table, staring into a candle, her eyes huge and dark in its feeble light.

He scoffed. What would she be doing, summoning spirits? Worshipping some dark god? It was just a four-watter plugged into a baseboard somewhere, to keep people from bumping into furniture in a strange house late at night. She was in bed and asleep, like he should be.

What did she wear to bed? Or did she wear anything at all?

The sergeant's hands clenched on the wheel. He started the little vehicle and, without turning on the headlights, drove off.

At the specified hour the next morning, Wilcox was back at VIP accommodations. Forstner could ride the bus in, the sergeant had decided, and join up with them at Camp Delta. Some instinct told him that he should meet Nicole this morning alone.

He knocked on Nicole's door, wondering how long it would take her to answer. Would she come to the door half-dressed, or wrapped in a towel straight from the shower? Would she invite him in to wait while she finished up? Or maybe his knock would wake her, and he really would find out what she wore to bed…

The door opened. Nicole, looking very crisp and professional in her uniform, passed him by with a terse "Good morning" and headed down the walk. He followed, puzzled and suddenly wary.

He got behind the wheel and started the engine. "Where to?"

"Back to Camp No," she said to the windshield. "One of the regular rooms this time. I'll wait there while you fetch the next one."

"You don't want any breakfast? No coffee?"

"No," she said shortly. There was no music in her voice today. Gone was the friendly, flirtatious girl who had seemed almost ready to invite him to spend the night.

Or… had the invitation been 'almost'? Had her warning at the curb last night been a test of sorts? One that he had failed? He tooled along in silence for another mile, then said, "Nicole, if I did something to upset you, I'm sorry."

She glanced his way, the corner of her mouth lifted in a tiny smile. "You sound like a guy fighting with his girlfriend, Brian." She shook her head and returned her gaze to the road ahead. "You didn't do anything. I'm just trying to keep my head in the game. So far has just been a warmup, really. The first one was easy as driving a nail." The corner of her mouth twitched again. "And the second one was kind of like teaching tricks to a puppy." Her face blanked again. "But the last three are going to take some concentration, and a lot of self-control. And they won't be any fun at all."


	3. Damnation

Monday June 21 2004

Guantanamo Bay Naval Preserve

Detainee Camp Delta

When Wilcox arrived at the proper block of Camp Five, he found the place in something of an uproar. Three MPs and the noncom who commanded the watch this shift were clustered around one closed cell door. The block was loud with the incomprehensible shouting of detainees in nearby cells.

When Wilcox reached the group, he saw that the door's food slot was open, the door swung down to form a narrow shelf below the opening. The watch officer was calling wearily through the door, "Return the rest of your food service, detainee."

From the other side of the door came a flood of speech that the sergeant assumed was Arabic. The tone of voice, and the hooting from nearby cells, made Wilson glad he couldn't understand the words. He said, "Does he speak English?"

"He doesn't speak it," the noncom said. "At least, not to us. But he understands us just fine. Return the spoon," he said to the door in a voice turned hard. "Now. Or we'll come in and get it. We'll tear your room to pieces searching it, even if we find the spoon in the first five seconds. Then we'll do a cavity search. And I'll make sure it's one of the women sticking a finger up your ass."

Wilson raised his eyebrows. "For a spoon?" The disposable cutlery given to the detainees - spoons only, no forks or knives -was so soft and flexible that it could be bent double without breaking. To use it, you had to take tiny bites or hold it right down near the business end to avoid losing whatever was in it.

"The handle's stiff enough to stick in somebody's eye," the man said. "Not about to let _this_ fucker keep it."

More shouted Arabic from inside the cell, then something flew through the slot to strike the shift commander's hip before falling to the floor: the spoon, coated with brown goo. The odor that filled the hallway left no doubt of the utensil's contents. The MP looked down at the small stain on his uniform and wrinkled his nose. "What brings you to the daycare?"

"Pickup. Number six forty-two."

The man looked back at the cell door, whose tray slot was now closed and secured. "What a coincidence."

With the help of another guard, Wilcox and Forstner got the big raghead shackled and bagged and into the Jeep, and rode to Camp No shoulder-to-shoulder in the little vehicle. The detainee's shouts and stiff-legged resistance quieted to mutterings once the vehicle was in motion: was it because he no longer had other detainees to perform for, or was it simple apprehension?

At the camp, the door of one of the interrogation rooms was open, and they brought the man through it to find Nicole waiting silently. She gestured at the interrogee's chair, and the three guards sat their captive down and secured him. Nicole stared down at the head-bagged figure handcuffed by both wrists to the arms of the straight chair, her eyes gone flat and empty, and Wilcox began to feel a different sort of unease at the thought of leaving them alone together.

"The sergeant speaks Arabic," he said, nodding to the MP who had helped to wrestle Six-forty-two into the room and secure him. "You may need an interpreter. This guy doesn't speak English. Or at least he pretends he doesn't, nobody's sure which."

"Thank you, Sergeant," Nicole said to the guard. "But I won't be needing an interpreter. And we won't need a third man to get him back to his cell. Corporal, take him back to his duty station and come back."

When the door closed behind the puzzled man, Wilcox asked, "You speak Arabic?"

"Just a few carefully memorized phrases. Farsi and Pashto too. But I'm not going to ask him anything."

Six-forty-two had stopped squirming in his seat and muttering in Arabic; in fact, he stilled so completely that the sergeant looked for some movement of his chest, and held his own breath until he saw it. Did the guy know English after all, Wilcox wondered, or was it hearing a woman's voice that claimed his attention? "Okay. Take off the bag now?"

"No. Leave him just as he is. And, Sergeant? I think you two should guard the door from the end of the corridor this time."

A Humvee bringing supplies from the main base to the little satellite camp in the hills – the facility used a lot of distilled water, for purposes the driver chose not to think about - was driving down the lane just outside the covered chainlink fence enclosing the compound, approaching the small rolling gate that closed off the entrance. At one point, that lane passed close by the prefab building in which detainees were interrogated. At closest approach, thirty feet from the blank concrete wall that rose above the barrier, the driver felt his attention pulled towards the structure, as if he'd seen someone he knew standing against the fence – no, not just someone he knew, someone he'd been looking for. Someone he had been looking for for a long time…

His hands followed his searching eyes, and the vehicle swerved sharply towards the building, bumping over the row of stones that formed the road's curb and nearly scraping a fender on the fence before the soldier wrenched it back on the road. For just a moment, the young man felt an awful sense of loss, as if he'd just been Dear-Johnned by his childhood sweetheart. But it passed, and he wiped absently at a single tear on his cheek and returned his full attention to his driving with no more than a bit of puzzlement at his actions.

Inside the corridor, not far from the bend near the entrance, Sergeant Wilcox heard a muffled scream from the interrogation room sixty feet away; he started forward a step before he identified the voice as male. He and Forstner had been ordered by Nicole in no uncertain terms to stay at the end of the hall until called for, but something tugged at him, something darker and more powerful than curiosity. He froze in place, listening.

The scream was followed by a series of grunts that sounded oddly nasal, as if they were being pushed past clenched teeth and closed lips. Then an animal sound that should never come from a human throat. Then silence.

Wilcox stepped back to his place, heart thumping. "Enhanced interrogation" didn't generally produce a lot of noise except from the hundred-watt speakers employed to induce sensory overload and steal the subject's sleep. What was she doing, bending his fingers back? But Six-forty-two was a man who'd been arrested more than once before he'd come here, once by the Syrians and once by the Israelis, and the sergeant was sure he'd endured his share of rough handling. There was too much horror in the man's cry for whatever physical discomfort a hundred-twenty-pound girl could possibly be inflicting with bare hands.

The man screamed again, louder and shriller. The sergeant felt that strange pull again, a dark undertow drawing him down the hall, toward the closed door waiting for him like an open maw.

He stepped back, some internal alarm making him shiver; only then did he realize he had taken three steps down the hall. Forstner, still in place at the intersection, stared at him. "Sarge, you okay?"

He ground out from between clenched teeth, "You don't feel that?"

"Feel what?" The younger man cast an uneasy glance down the hall. "Sarge, this is some weird shit."

The man's voice came again, an awful moan rising to a scream. Wilcox retreated beyond the T junction, panting, nerves singing, and discovered – _what the fuck?_ – that his dick was stretching the front of his trousers.

He retreated even further down the hall, until his back was against the outside door. He swallowed, feeling his heartrate pick up, and took deep breaths, trying to think of something soothing. Nothing came but images of the girl: on the beach with the surf foaming around her calves; walking half-naked up the walk in that black bikini, casting a coy glance over her shoulder; her first appearance in the door of the helo, looking too fresh and innocent to be here. But the image his mind settled on was the one of her kneeling in the dust of the road, staring down that hostile reptile and bending it to her will.

"_Keep your distance, Brian. Physically and emotionally."_

_What the hell is going on? _

Forstner, still standing at the T, looked at him with growing alarm. "Sarge?"

He shook his head, concentrating on his breathing. There was something wrong with the air in here, that was it. He just needed fresh air. "Call me," he got out, and stepped outside.

A few steps from the front door, he started feeling better. The day was sunshiny and warming nicely, and he took deep breaths of the sun-warmed air. An urge to light one up came to him: strange, because he hadn't smoked in years. The only time he even thought about it anymore…

… was after sex.

The door behind him opened. Forstner said, "She wants us."

Wilcox followed the corporal inside and down the hall. The sergeant stepped through the interrogation room's door and hesitated. Six-forty-two sat slumped in the chair, held in place by his restraints. Wilcox thought the detainee was unconscious until the bagged head bobbed and the man made a small sound, and the sergeant realized he was sobbing.

The uniformed girl stood over him, hands on hips, looking down. Only, she didn't look like a girl anymore. Suddenly Wilcox was sure that this woman was decades older than she looked. She was still gorgeous, but thoughts of taking her to bed didn't make him feel guilty anymore; they made him feel the way stepping through an uncleared door in combat did. She bent and placed her mouth near the side of the man's headbag and spoke; at the first sound of her voice, he jerked upright. Whatever she said wasn't English, and the detainee understood, judging by the way he whimpered and twisted in a futile attempt to get away from her.

She straightened and gestured to Wilcox. The sergeant approached to collect his detainee. What he saw when he rounded the chair made him hesitate again. The chin of the man's headbag was sodden, as was the front of his orange jumpsuit: sweat, tears, spit, whatever. But the man's crotch was soaked as well, and despite the size of the stain, the sergeant's nose told him it wasn't piss.

She said, "I want this man returned to his cell and placed on constant watch – I know you're already looking in on him every three minutes, but he's smart, and rather more motivated right now; I don't want to take the smallest chance with him. I doubt he'll want to eat or drink. If he covers his window, don't waste time trying to talk him into clearing it – just go in after him. Keep him alive for me, and I'll be back in two days to question him."

"Does he know that?"

She met his eyes, and he felt the hairs on his neck rise. "Why do you suppose he's determined to kill himself?"

They returned the unresisting detainee to Camp Five, handling him almost like baggage, and picked up the next, housed in the same block. This time, Wilcox stepped outside immediately after securing him in the room. From there, he couldn't hear whatever noise the man might be making, and there was no porn film starring Nicole playing behind his eyes. But he still felt a deep, almost painful stirring in his loins, and a constant disquieting pull toward the door. He imagined himself as a fly in proximity to a bug zapper, drawn in by the light despite the strange humming and the smell of scorched flesh surrounding it.

Forstner stepped outside. Wilcox thought he was coming to fetch him, much earlier than the first time, until the man reached into his breast pocket for a pack of cigarettes. Having smokes on his person while on duty was against regs, but Wilcox routinely let the man slide on it. The corporal shook one out and started to put the pack away without offering one to Wilcox, and was surprised when the sergeant gestured for one. They lit up together and stared at the blank green fence ten yards away.

"I'll go back in in a minute," Forstner said. "It's just, listening to it is starting to freak me out. I don't want to know what she's doing in there, but it's like keeping your tongue out of the socket when you get a tooth pulled, you know?"

Wilcox nodded. He coughed, stubbed the cig out on the sole of his shoe, and put it in his pocket.

"So, what did you two do last night?"

"Hit Starbuck's for a bite. Then I took her shopping. I watched her sunbathing at Silt Beach for a while, and dropped her off."

"Nice." He took a puff. "I was kind of thinking-"

"No." He swallowed. _Not quite._

"Okay." Another puff. "Jeri was off last night," he said, referring to his new girlfriend.

"Lucky you."

"Uh huh." Another puff. "Something happened, when we were together."

Wilcox thought he knew what was coming, but held his silence, waiting.

The corporal went on, "It was great, man, everything coming together just perfect. Ever come so hard, it seems like it's never gonna end? And your legs feel weak afterwards? It was that good. But…" He took a long drag on his cigarette, taking it almost down to the filter. "Just as I nut, I…"

"You thought about _her_," Wilcox said.

"No, that's when I realized I'd been thinking about her almost the whole time." He put out his butt. "She comes back, I hope they give her somebody else to run her around." He went back inside.

The third detainee was housed in the same block as the first two, and like the first required an additional guard to handle him. As soon as his cell door opened, he began babbling in whatever his native language was, and thrashed as they reached for his arms and legs. The man they had just returned seemed to be calling to him, his voice rapid and urgent. The rest of the block was eerily silent, without a single catcall from the other detainees in their cells.

While he was being put in restraints, the shift commander said, "They're all nerved up right now. We just had to send Six Forty-two to the hospital, in chains. He started crying and talking nonsense about an hour before mealtime. Then when he got his tray, the fucker turned his back to the window and shoved his Styrofoam cup down his throat." The man's eyes searched his, but he asked no question, and Wilcox offered no answers. In truth, he had none.

The whole trip to Camp No, the detainee rocked in his seat, a constant stream of muttering coming from inside his head bag – chanting or praying, it sounded like. It was unnerving, and Wilcox thought more than once about telling him to shut up, but he didn't – first, because he was feeling a strange sort of sympathy for the bound and bagged man so plainly terrified; second, because the sergeant didn't think he would obey – might be so far into his own head right now that he wouldn't even hear the order.

He glanced at the third MP in the little Jeep: Preiss, the same man who had helped them with Six Forty-two. He was watching the headbagged man with a sick expression. Wilcox caught his eye and raised his eyebrows: _what's he saying?_ The MP shook his head and gave his attention to the passing scenery, which he'd doubtless seen a hundred times.

When the three men chained the detainee into the chair, he stopped talking as if he had been switched off. All three soldiers felt their eyes drawn to the uniformed woman on the other side of the table; Wilcox could no more have taken his eyes off her than he could have risen off the floor and flown around the room. His breath tightened, and his breath shortened. In his mind's eye, her clothing disappeared, and she was back in that black bikini. And then she was naked. He shook his head to clear it, and saw her watching him. He blushed but couldn't look away. Her eyes…

"That will be all, boys," she said softly. "Corporal Forstner, return Sergeant Preiss to his post. Sergeant Wilcox, go with him."

He squeezed out, "I, I can't…"

"I know you can't. Do it anyway. Both of you. And take your time coming back."

On the drive back to Delta, the MP looked silently from Wilson to Forstner, his eyes full of unasked questions. But the other two men kept their silence. At the gate, just before they passed in, Preiss said, "He was praying for God to take him, before he was lost forever. What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

When they passed back out the gate, the corporal hesitated, then turned away from Camp No and headed east.

They passed the helipad where they had first seen her and came to the tall wire fence that enclosed the Preserve. Forstner turned north, and they began to follow the road that paralleled it. The brush came right up to the fence in most places, a green wall that hid everything on the other side. The road climbed until they were in the hills. At the top of the ridge, Forstner brought the little vehicle to a halt, and they looked at the main base spreading out below them, and the bay beyond, busy with water traffic.

"She's cute as a boxful of puppies," Forstner said to the view. "And hot as a bikini pageant at spring break. And she's a total psycho who makes Charlie Manson look like Mister Rogers. If she's spending another night, I think you better let me run her around."

Wilcox felt an irrational twinge of jealousy. "Mind your own business, Max. You already got a woman to worry about."

The driver shrugged. "Just saying, man. You get in a situation with her, you may not like finding out what she's into."

-0-

"I know you speak English, Mahmoud," Nicole said to the bound man, who sat still as a mouse in a thicket while a hawk is circling overhead. "And yes, I know your real name." She leaned close. "And what you've done. I presume you killed the man whose ID you were carrying when you were picked up. Just bad luck that he was on a CIA wanted list as well, eh? Or maybe it was divine justice." She straightened and began to circle him as she talked. "You were praying when you were brought in. Did your prayers give you any comfort? I doubt they did. Your faith is weak, Mahmoud. It was never the real reason for the things you did, just a way of getting support. You're a hater. The people you want to hurt are the only ones you care about.

"You learned English in Iraq, from a group of young Saudis come to heed the call and defend the Faith – or bored rich kids looking for adventure, take your pick. They were blown to pieces when they tried to sneak a carload of IEDs past the Coalition pickets. They probably heard the A-10's engines, but the sound was miles away, and they had no idea how far a Warthog can see in the dark. You didn't think much of their chances when you sent them out, but they had already been with your group for three months, and you knew it wouldn't be long before they got tired of playing war and went home, so you decided to get some use out of them, as martyrs if nothing else."

The bound man stirred, making his restraints rattle. He began speaking in a low voice, a language not English.

"Shut up," Nicole said, and the man stopped as suddenly as if a switch had been thrown on his vocal chords. She stopped as well, just behind his chair. "Twenty-three people died in the mosque you bombed. You did it because one of them was a man whose politics your patron disliked. A Muslim who murders other Muslims has no claim on Allah's mercy. Did you really think God would reward you for what you did?" She leaned close. "_I_… am the reward He sent you for that."

She resumed pacing. "This isn't an interrogation. I'm going to talk, and you're going to listen. Any questions I ask you will just be tests of your understanding. When I'm done, you have a decision to make, and you'll make it instantly, or I'll make it for you. I think you already have some idea what I'm talking about."

She stopped again, and examined her captive. His chained hands, tightly gripping the chair arms, were his only exposed skin. She smiled when she saw that the dark hair on the backs of his hands had risen. "The men here look at me, and they see a pretty girl, too young to belong here, charming and easy to talk to. They constantly imagine having sex with me, of course. And yet, there's something about me that makes them cautious and uneasy, something they can't explain." She drew a fingertip across the erect hairs, and he jerked. "But you, with that bag on your head… you see me clearer than any of them, don't you? The first man told all of you what he met in this room, of course, but how is it you understood what he was trying to describe? Is it possible that not all your teachers were zealots and pedagogues, ranters with just enough grasp of Scripture to sound learned when they told you who your enemies were?" She leaned close again. "Was there one scholar among them, someone who could tell you stories older than the Prophet, stories of the djinn, and of demons, and stealers of souls?"

She straightened and stared at the bound man. He cried out and twisted, straining at his restraints. His hips thrust forward again and again, so violently it seemed they might break. He screamed and fell back, gasping and grunting.

Conversationally she said, "You know, if you look up 'ecstasy' in a modern dictionary, all the definitions have to do with pleasure. But if you can find an old enough one, it's defined as a glut of sensation that overwhelms the senses and steals one's sense of self, without making any distinction between pain and pleasure. That's because there was a time when people realized that, past a certain point, there _is_ no difference."

She drew close and bent over the shivering man. In a low, intimate voice she said, "What you just felt … was me taking hold of your soul, and giving it the gentlest of tugs, to see how firmly it's anchored." She knelt beside the chair, resting a hand on the man's arm; he jerked as if shocked. "The answer is, not very. Like I said, Mahmoud, your faith is weak. I could pluck it from you like a grape from its stem. Not that it would be so easy for you. The experience defies description, truly. And the memory of it will be so powerful that it will never seem to end. And when I say 'never,' I mean never, Mahmoud. The soul never dies. But there will be no Hell for you, no Paradise. You'll be mine to do with as I please, until time itself comes to an end."

She stood. "But there is a ray of hope for you, Mahmoud. I was sent here to take you for your punishment, but on the way, I was approached by someone to whom I owe a small favor. They have an interest in you, it seems, and they bargained for you. So here's your choice, Mahmoud…"

-0-

"Someone will be coming for him in about a week," Nicole said to Wilcox. "The paperwork was started before I arrived. The agent probably won't be very talkative, Brian, and it would be best not to ask him any questions."

They were once again at the little helipad between the fence and the detention center. The sky was clear, unlike the day before when she arrived. The wind ruffled her skirt and sent her hair waving toward the sea. She was utterly beautiful, and the thought of touching her made the sergeant's mouth go dry with fear. He managed to get out, "Am I going to see you when you come back?"

"I'm not really coming back, Brian." She watched the speck of the approaching aircraft swell against the cloudless sky. "Telling you that in the first prisoner's hearing was part of the setup."

"Setup?"

"Right." She smiled. "Repeating what I had just told him, to someone else in a language he wasn't supposed to understand, confirmed it for him. Sardar confirmed that the guards don't speak Arabic, and the prisoners pass information freely. And so he told them exactly what I wanted.

"Mahmoud was the only detainee I was sent here for. The first two hardcases were just to soften him up and set the stage." She gave him a brief glance. "Torture alone was never going to break him. He knew that no matter how roughly you treated him, there was a line you wouldn't cross, and there would be an end to it eventually. If there's one thing these people have learned at Guantanamo, it's patience."

She smiled again, a different one that raised the hairs on the sergeant's neck and forearms. "So I had to threaten him with something worse than pain, even worse than death. Something that no amount of patience could overcome, because it would last forever. One of his favorite teachers was a scholar, and something of a mystic. The stories the man told him amused him, but they also planted a little seed of superstition in him, according to the dossier I had on him. So I used that to convince him that working for us was a whole lot better than the alternative."

The aircraft, a small two-seater this time, settled to the concrete, its blades slowing but still under power. They were far enough from the pad that they were clear of the dust and still able to talk. Wilcox picked up her bag from the ground. He said to her, "Who the hell are you, Nicole, really?"

She took the bag from his hand, seeming careful not to touch him. "When I figure that out, I'll let you know." She blew him a kiss and headed for the chopper.

.

Tuesday June 22 2004

Kingston Jamaica

The door to the luxury hotel suite opened to Nicole's keycard, and she passed through the foyer into the sitting room. She didn't need to call out for her brother; she knew he was near just from the faint tingle on her skin. She opened the door of his room without knocking, certain he was aware of her approach.

Matthew Callahan was sitting on the foot of his bed, dressed only in a pair of striped boxers. He didn't look up; all his attention was on the dress shoe and shoe brush in his hands. He gave its gleaming toe a final lick and bent to pick up the other at his feet.

Nicole paused to survey her brother with a woman's appreciation. Matt was tall and blond and tan and had the body of a Greek statue; his features were regular and nicely proportioned and beautiful in a square-jawed, very masculine way. He paid attention to his appearance, and kept his hair and nails clean and trimmed. He dressed expensively and well. She was sure that only his cold and disinterested manner kept women from mobbing him in the streets. But Matt had never been in a relationship, so far as Nicole knew, and seldom indulged even in casual hookups. Being alone was part of the price one paid, she supposed, for being a superman.

Nicole plopped down on the side of the bed behind him and toed off her shoes. She combed her fingers through her hair, lifting the damp strands off the back of her neck. Mid-eighties wasn't all that hot, she supposed, but she simply wasn't ready for Caribbean summer, not after spending so much time the past year in high Colorado and northern Michigan. "Are you coming in or going out?"

"Going out. I'm finally meeting with one of the gangleaders at his crib. He'll want to impress me, so all his boys will be there."

"Figures." She unbuttoned her jeans and drew down the zipper.

Matt examined the shoe critically, turning it this way and that; it already bore the dull gloss of a polish application. He picked up the shoe brush again and began cleaning off the excess, raising a shine on the leather. "Your room's next door, Nikki."

"I just want to cool down. If I leave for a shower, I'm sure you'll be gone before I step out. You haven't been much company, Matt." Nicole shrugged her hips and slid the denim down her legs and onto the floor.

"I'm working. I didn't invite you to tag along, and I certainly don't know why you thought we'd make some sort of vacation out of it." The other shoe was now gleaming. He set both of them together on the floor and admired them.

"Oh, I don't know. Maybe cuz you love me, and you like spending time with me?" She crossed her arms in front of her and gripped the hem of her shirt with both hands, and a moment later it joined her jeans on the floor, leaving her in bra, panties, and footie socks.

"Both true. But the operative word is 'spend'. Not 'waste'. My time is too important to throw away on simple-minded recreations. If you really want to spend time together, you could come with." He stood and moved to the closet.

"I'm sure you don't need my help, and watching you kill a houseful of people isn't my idea of a family outing."

"No accounting for taste." He selected slacks and a jacket, holding the hangers in one hand as he continued looking through the items on the rod. "How was Cuba?"

"Dreary. Everything worth seeing or doing is on the other side of the barbed wire. Petting a lizard was the high point of the trip. I thought I might at least mix a little pleasure with business while I was there – a place like that has to be crawling with hot guys-"

"So that's why you were looking over the personnel files as well as the dossiers?" He _tsk_ed.

"I asked for one escort, they gave me two. They were both so sweet I was thinking about a threesome. But it didn't work out."

"Actually, I was asking about the mission."

"The mission, the mission." She swung her legs up, putting her head on the pillow. She stretched, feeling the heat leach out of her. "Well enough, I suppose. Hardly seemed worth the interruption."

He added a light dress shirt and silk tie to his burden. "One would think you'd be glad to be back to work. Surely you don't miss being a sheepdog at Darwin."

"Actually, I do. Though I'm glad I wasn't there when Uncle Jack blew through." Shortly after the kids at Darwin had manifested en masse and been confined, Matt and Nicole had gone to Boulder to report; they hadn't expected anything to require their attention at Darwin for about a week, which was when Dr. Ivery had predicted that the first of the subjects in isolation would break. No one in the Research Directorate had suspected that Jack Lynch knew of Darwin's existence and his missing son's presence there. That IO's Director of Operations would stage a one-main raid on the complex, taking down the entire guard force, and arrange the escape of every Special in custody hadn't entered anyone's wildest dreams.

Matt tossed the items on the bed on the way to the dresser. "I wish I'd been there. Years of work locating them and setting up the training facility _right_ down the drain, just as we were about to start getting a return on investment. Now we have to hunt them all down again, only this time they're hiding from us."

"You think you could have stopped him?"

He opened the top drawer. "I know I could have. So could you."

"Actually, no. My I-S doesn't work on him."

He looked back over his shoulder at her. "Nikki. Jack _Lynch_?"

"Just a little experiment. I wanted to see if Bobby's immunity was inherited."

"Did he realize?"

"I'm very sure he did. Speaking of the runaways, I take it the trail in New Mexico has gone cold?"

"The team hasn't turned up one clue since Jack and Kat drove off that hilltop. It's been over a week. They're in the wind again." From the drawer, Matt removed a pair of dark socks and a semi-auto pistol in a shoulder holster before returning to the bed.

Nicole scoffed. "A _gun_?"

He dropped the weapon on the bed next to the clothing. "I'm visiting a criminal stronghold. Gang tensions in this town are an inch from erupting into open warfare. I'm sure I'll get frisked at the door. If I'm not carrying, they'll be suspicious."

"And how, exactly, would that make any difference?"

"It would spoil the fun." He shrugged into the shirt and buttoned it up. As he hung the tie around his neck, Nicole stood and faced him, taking the ends. He said, "Nikki, I'm perfectly capable of tying my own tie."

Her forearms brushed his chest as she worked on the knot. "And I'm perfectly capable of letting you. Now shut up." She drew it tight. "I've always liked this color on you." She held on and looked up into his eyes. "You look so handsome. But you're still so obviously a tightass." Nicole reached up to touch the back of her brother's neck.

"_Don't_." The word cracked like a gunshot. He went on, more mildly, "Even think about it, Nicole."

Nicole let go and flopped down on the bed. "I was just trying to loosen you up before your big game."

"I'll decide how loose I need to be." He sat on the bed and drew on the socks. "Is this how you 'experimented' with good old Uncle Jack?"

She stroked his back with a sock-clad toe. "More or less. I had all my clothes on."

"The straitlaced old warhorse must have been shocked down to his shoes."

She smiled up at the ceiling. "Well, the reaction was profound. But I don't think it was shock. The poor old thing seemed almost sorry for me, like I had a terminal illness or something."

Matthew grunted. "He always was sentimental about you." He stood and stepped into the pants, tucking the shirt in.

"I suppose." She shrugged. "I guess he never got over the guilts for not 'saving' us." At her brother's scoff, she said, "Don't you wonder what it would have been like if the Shop hadn't taken us in, just waited to recruit us for Darwin with the others instead?"

He slipped on the empty holster and adjusted it. "Oh, I'm sure we'd have both ended up aces on Special Security's card deck." This was an old discussion between them, and Matt's thoughts and words settled into a well-worn groove. "We're right where we belong, Nicole. The world needs us, and if we hadn't gone through what we did, we wouldn't be who we are."

"It must be wonderful to be so sure. I just can't help wondering what it would be like to live a normal life, like the others did before Darwin."

Matt sat at the foot of the bed again and bent to slip on his shoes. "They hadn't manifested yet. Once that happens, there is no such thing as a normal life." As he tied the laces, he chuckled.

"What's so funny?"

"Imagining you with an Ethan Stills poster tacked to your bedroom wall when you were sixteen. Or going to the prom at eighteen. Or…" He chuckled again, louder. "Or letting one of your friends talk you into a blind date. Complaining about your boyfriend wanting sex all the time."

"Beast." She gently kicked him in the back. Her eyes returned to the ceiling. "Do you really think we'll find them?"

"Of course. It's just a matter of time. Slipping through our net in New Mexico was a fluke, they won't be so lucky next time." He slipped the pistol into the holster and stood. "I presume you're going out tonight."

"Why do you presume that?"

"Because you're behaving like a cat in heat."

"Actually," she said, stretching, "I was thinking of staying in and ordering room service. The boy they send up from the kitchen seems nice."

"Be careful." He shrugged into his jacket.

She smiled at the ceiling. "You're worried about me, really?"

"I'm worried about dealing with evidence that would puzzle a medical examiner."

"In the first place, I don't kill them all, for crying out loud. In the second place, that's a fine comment from somebody who makes people's brains spurt out their mouths for kicks. Can't believe you're going to soak that pretty Armani jacket in blood. I hope you're taking a change of clothes with you."

Matthew picked up an attaché case from a nearby chair. "Right here. But it's just contingency planning. They're going to appear to have been killed by a rival gang, at least if the investigators don't look closely."

"And if they do look closely?"

"Then they'll appear to have killed one another. A betrayal. No evidence I was there, either way."

"Why is IO bothering with a bunch of rasta drugrunners, anyway?"

"They have associates in Mexico and Venezuela who are into things besides drugs. Planning Directorate thinks taking out the top boys on both sides of this little turf war will goad one group or another into an indiscretion, which will in turn lead us to the men Ivana's really after."

"Wheels within wheels."

"As always." He moved toward the door. "Tomorrow, I'll be spending the day traveling all over town playing tourist, giving my next victims a good look at me. Come along? Sightseeing, some good meals, maybe a little snorkeling. I'm sure having you on my arm would do my cover no harm, and make these lecherous lowlifes a little more disposed to talk with me."

"How sentimental of you. Let's see how I feel in the morning."

"Don't pretend you need to think about it. You know you won't pass up a day of quality time with big brother." He headed for the door. "Maybe I'll even take you dancing. Some of these jerks practically live at 'da club'."

"Matt."

He turned. Nicole lay with one hand under her head, one knee raised, the other leg stretched out. She caressed her thigh with her free hand and smiled, eyes sleepy. "If I wasn't your baby sister?"

"Well, of course. By any means necessary."

She waved him away. "God. You even make sex sound like a mission."

He turned away, smiling darkly. "And in every way imaginable."


	4. Attraction

Boulder Colorado

Monday November 27 2006

0857 hours

Frank Colby, Director of Operations for International Operations, rolled his wheelchair through his bedroom door into the public area of his hillside mansion, and found his assistant, Cheryl Carson, still sprawled out on one of his couches with a blanket over her sleeping form and a litter of paperwork on the coffee table in front of her. He brought the chair to the arm of the couch her head was pillowed on and gently nudged her shoulder. "Hey."

Her eyes slitted, then opened wide as she recognized him. She sat up hastily, throwing off the blanket. "What time is it?"

"About nine." When her head turned toward the window he added, "AM."

"Oh my God, no," the girl said, finger-combing her hair.

Colby lifted an eyebrow. "What, worried about being late to work?" Since Colby had hired her for an investigation eight months before, she had evolved into his personal assistant, relieved of other duties by Ivana herself, spending nearly all her waking time with him.

"My car's been in your driveway all night," she said, standing and turning toward the bathroom. "Your security is changing shifts right now. Before I can even get home, it'll be all over Central that I spent the night."

The Director looked pointedly at his legs. "They'd have to have a pretty good imagination to make something of it, Cher."

"If you really think so, you don't know what people are like around here." The bathroom door closed.

Colby picked up the paperwork and photographs from the coffee table and put them all back into the big file folder. For once, the research wasn't about the Lynch Mob, but a pair of Specials, runaways from Darwin, who had been located two weeks ago in Detroit but had somehow made their surveillance and slipped away. Colby's people hadn't been involved in the operation, but Gerry Ruche had asked him to look into it and offer suggestions about how it might have been handled differently. Frank was under no illusions that Ivana's Security Advisor had developed a fresh respect for the Operations Director's opinions and expertise; the man was just looking to dilute any possible blame by involving him. But that was all right with Colby. Since Chula Vista, his increasing involvement with the hunt for the Genactive fugitives had allowed him to more effectively divert IO from the course of investigations that got dangerously close to Lynch and his kids. If Ruche kept dropping items like this into Colby's lap, he might be of some help to other runaways as well.

The bathroom door opened. "Listen," Cheryl said, "would it be okay to take off for a couple hours? I really need a shower and a toothbrush and a change."

"Take the day off. You've earned it." When she opened her mouth to protest he said, "I'm not planning on going anywhere today, Cher. If plans change, I'll call you. I can get around the house just fine. Go on," he pressed, "go into town and do some shopping. Grocery shopping, at least. As much time as you spend here, you must not have much chance to stock the fridge and shelves in your room."

"As much time as I spend here, they might as well stay empty. About the only time I'm there is when I'm sleeping." The tall blonde pulled her coat from the closet by the door and shrugged into it, pulling her hair out of her collar and arranging it on her shoulders – she had grown it out since they had first met – before snugging a wool cap over her head; high Colorado in late November was _cold_.

As she turned to the door, Colby said, "If you want, you should pack a bag and drop it into one of the spare bedrooms, for contingencies." When she turned back to regard him, he head-shrugged. "If you're comfortable with the idea."

"I think I can weather the peril to my maidenly virtue," she said. "You sure?"

"We're not talking about moving you in. It's just a bit of a drive to Central and back. If you've got a change or two here, it gives us options."

She nodded. "I'll do that then." She opened the door. "Call me."

After Cheryl shut the door behind her, Colby rolled back into the kitchen. He set a kettle on the stove, intending to have a cup of tea to soothe his nerves – and also to give his assistant plenty of time to get down the drive and away.

_Friendly and professional. _They had agreed on that, verbally and without qualifications, when they had first begun working together, when he still had full use of his lower body – and a reputation for choosing psychos as love interests. But after his disabling injury, the girl's attitude had softened and warmed, bringing their relationship beyond professional – and she had dropped numerous clues that she was ready at any time to take their relationship beyond friendship as well. But Colby was far from ready to take any steps in that direction, pun very much intended. Physically, he supposed he was still capable after a fashion, and Cheryl Carson was an attractive and desirable woman. But a number of problems beyond the physical caused him to maintain a certain distance between them.

First and foremost, though he was sure Cheryl's feelings toward him were genuine, he also knew that she was Ivana's spy. He didn't think that she had much enthusiasm for that part of her job, but it would be foolish to bring the girl into his full confidence – or even to put her in a position to learn something of his secret activities - and thereby force her to choose between her two bosses.

Second, there was the Shop's policy against women getting in relationships with their superiors, a rule no less strictly enforced for being unwritten. If it became known, or even strongly inferred, that Cheryl was sleeping with the Director of her department, she would never be promoted on her own merit again.

Third, Cheryl was just too nice to be involved with a man with his numerous disadvantages. The male-to-female ratio at Central was at least four to one, and even discounting superiors in her chain of command, she should easily be able to find somebody she could love without having half the rungs above her on her career ladder suddenly removed, or risking a knock on the door in the middle of the night.

And besides, what kind of partner was _he_ for a nice girl?

Once the water was heating, he took his 'lighter' out of his pocket, pressed the button that would foil any listening devices, and set it on the kitchen counter. Then he made a call.

"_Frank?_" Anne's voice, sounding oddly anechoic, as if she were in one of the Agency's indoor shooting ranges. "_Are you all right?_"

"Just fine." He pressed the phone to his ear. "Anne, where did you get those hair samples?"

A moment's hesitation. "_I don't want to lie to you, Frank. But I don't want to tell you either._"

"Then let me say this. You have nothing to be jealous about."

"_What?_"

"I'm assuming you picked these off something in the back of your boyfriend's closet." _But didn't they lose all their clothing when their house in La Jolla burned down?_

"_Frank, I'm afraid you're being unclear._"

He took a mental step back and started again. "The hairs belong to two individuals who work here. I know them both. So did Jack."

"_Two, really?_"

You sound surprised."

"_I am, a little. Go on._"

"The longer hair came from the head of an Operations trooper named Christine Blaze. The shorter one, it's…"

"_A pubic hair, I know. Whose?_"

"A Psy Ops staffer named Alicia Turner. Jack knew both of them."

"_Knew them, as in 'knew' knew?_"

"It was over with both of them long before he left IO," he said. "His affair with Alicia was a thing shortly after his wife left him – a result, not the cause. She was his grief counselor."

"_I'd make a remark about service above and beyond, but I'm sure you'd think it was hypocritical._"

He ignored that and went on, "I didn't even know him then, but their history was kind of an open secret, and he mentioned it to me once. Christie was a protégé, like me. They got close after he moved her into an X-Team. They broke up a few months before he bugged out, not on good terms. I doubt he's talked to her in a year." _Not strictly true. He's seen Christie at least once, but I doubt it was a happy reunion. _"So wherever you found them, it doesn't mean anything."

"_Oh, on the contrary. I think finding them where I did is full of meaning. I'm just not sure what the message is yet. And no, I'm not jealous. My man knows who he's with._"

The door bell he had rigged to report the arrival of a car in his driveway chimed a single note. Cheryl, coming back for something? "Gotta go. Things good with you?"

"_Song in my heart, Frank. Thank you for being my friend._"

He heard the door open again. Instantly he disconnected the call and disengaged the masking device. "I'm in the kitchen, Cher," he called. "Forget something?"

No answer.

"Cher?"

He gripped the wheels of his chair and rolled out of the kitchen.

A girl not Cheryl Carson stood in the living room. Even though she was turned away, studying the opposite wall, Frank recognized her instantly, and his mouth went dry.

She looked dressed for a party, in a sleeveless charcoal-colored dress that was open to the small of her back, snug but not tight around the thighs and hips, with a hem that ended just above her knees. A wide-brimmed felt hat protected the creamy skin of her face and neck from the sun, and short leather driving gloves her hands. Her shoes were four-inch spikes that shaped her calves beautifully. She turned his way, and he felt the same reaction he had on the night he'd woken to the smell of lighter fluid and seen Audrey standing over him, blank-eyed, a lit match in her hand.

She stood with a hand on her hip, posing. "Well, hello."

He couldn't answer, couldn't meet her eyes. Her lower legs looked just as lovely from the front, tapering up from her slender ankles to knees that were smooth and unblemished. The dress must be expensive and tailored, he thought, to show off her figure so well: without being immodestly tight, it followed every movement of her thighs and hips and torso, revealing the lithe athleticism of her figure. Her hips were rounded yet still slender, her belly flat with just a hint of contour that indicated perfect muscle tone, drawing the eyes to the hollow between her thighs.

He swallowed and lifted his gaze to chest height. The dress had no neckline, instead gathering at her throat to cover her collarbones yet leaving her shoulders bare. He tried and failed to raise his eyes from her breasts, which were not overlarge but full and perfectly formed; he was certain their shape and lift had nothing to do with a surgeon's skill or the artifice of undergarments. He thought he could just make out the gentle protuberances of her nipples…

She said with good humor, "I'm up _here_, Frank."

He blushed and swallowed again and lifted his eyes, past the silky-looking shoulders and the smooth slender neck. The face framed by the blue-black hair was oval in shape, the chin small but not pointed, the cheeks clearly defined but not prominent, every element of its structure symmetrical and in perfect proportion. The tip of her nose was slightly upturned. The full, pouty lips stretched, showing the tips of two front teeth.

Finally, feeling like a man paddling a canoe downriver who feels the current suddenly strengthen as a deep rumbling fills the air, he lifted his eyes to meet hers, incredible violet pools of seemingly endless depth.

"There now," she said. "That wasn't so hard, was it?"

He drew a breath. _I'm a dead man. _"Hello, Nicole," he said, voice carefully neutral and unwelcoming. "What are you doing here?"

Ivana Baiul's special interrogator took off her hat and tossed it on the couch to join her coat. "Can't I just be visiting a sick friend?" She started pulling off her gloves.

"We're not friends, Nicole. We don't see each other outside the Shop, and we hardly see each other inside. We're in different Directorates. We don't go to the same meetings or work on the same projects. We don't even greet in the hallways."

"Too true. It's almost as if we're avoiding each other, isn't it?" She stepped out of her shoes and wiggled her toes in the carpet. "Ahh. The floors at Central are murder on your feet, aren't they?" She looked at him. "Oh. Sorry."

His breathing shallowed. "I've been interviewed six times since Chula Vista. I told everything I know."

"Well, sure." She sat on the end of the couch and swung her legs up, putting her feet on the cushions and the small of her back against the arm. She raised one knee, and his breath stopped for a moment as her skirt slipped down, baring her legs to mid-thigh. "Ivana doesn't even know I'm here, Frank. I've got some thoughts on Chula Vista that I'd like to talk about, but if it makes you uncomfortable, they're not that important. Really. We can just chat about whatever comes up."

He pulled his eyes from her bare thigh and reflected a moment on how bad an idea that would be. "What are your thoughts about Chula Vista?"

She shifted her legs, knees brushing together briefly in a mutual caress. "To start, I want to rethink our assumptions about the Specials' relationships and motives. Some of the Lynch Mob's actions during the raid take them out of the pigeonholes we usually assign them. Kat and Bobby especially – who would ever have figured _them _to turn into badasses? But the real head-scratcher is John Lynch. Even people who've never met him can tell that he's an alpha dog just from a glance at his picture. For most of his career, he's been the man in charge, whether it's a solo mission or a team or a Directorate. But, at Chula Vista, our witnesses' observations seemed to indicate otherwise. He gave Caitlin advice, but only when asked, and he deferred to her orders at least once."

"He was on overwatch, flying the plane. He had to let someone else lead on the ground. You don't second-guess your field command. That's just good organization."

"Maybe so. But Kat seemed to be clashing with their Twelve-five liaison for control of the mission. That's _not_ good organization. And it's not like Lynch to tolerate such a loose cannon on his team." She paused to look at him. "I can understand this being an upsetting subject. I know one of the things Dixie and Kat argued about was whether to bust you up."

He was upset, but that upset came from how closely the Shop's chief inquisitor was circling the truth he'd hoped was safely hidden forever. "It's okay. Finish your thought."

"Despite what Dixie told Caitlin, the orders to beat you within an inch of your life didn't come from your old friend and mentor.. If Jack Lynch had felt it was necessary, he'd have done it himself."

Colby nodded. "That's how I figured it too, but it was a personal opinion, no evidence."

"So what's the real relationship between Lynch's group and the Twelve-fives? We assume the little monsters are trying to recruit the kids, and Ivery reports that Caitlin said as much at Chula Vista. But the Twelve-fives aren't selling themselves very well, if they're arm wrestling with Jack and Kat over control of their own mission. That suggests they're relying on something else to drive the kids into their camp rather than wooing them. Does that sound reasonable to you?"

"You'd know better than me. I was there, but I didn't hear what Dixie told Fairchild in front of Ivery's cell. I only know that, whatever it was, it made her back down in a hurry." Colby's voice sounded rough in his ears.

"Ivery did. You didn't read his report?"

"My copy didn't include a transcript of the conversation."

"Oh." Her legs shifted again, and the dress slid a little further down. His anger drained away. "Ivana probably wanted to spare you. She's very fond of you, you know. We all are."

"She still shouldn't have done it," he said weakly.

"Maybe not. If you really want it, I'll see about getting you the full report. Mostly it was horror stories about what IO would do to the kids if they were caught again. Dixie seemed awfully knowledgeable about the initial post-manifestation doctrine, but she twisted it around to make the training and research team sound like a bunch of sex-crazed psychos hungry for victims. Kat was always a little jumpy about the subject of sex," she mused. "I can't imagine a better way to manipulate her."

Her other knee lifted briefly, and the skirt was now bunched almost to her hips. _How can her underwear not be showing? Unless…._ She tucked her skirt absently between her thighs while she spoke, and her hand lingered there; he held his breath for six seconds until she removed it. He swallowed and said, "So, you don't agree with the accepted story about her and Gierling?"

She huffed. "It would take more than four days in Darwin's basement to turn that girl into a killer. Or a seductress." She went on, "You said that Lynch's Twelve-five, Anna, was connected to the Resistance in some way, but you hadn't determined how before your cover was blown. The common assumption is that she's their liaison and recruiter, of course. But how did she connect with Jack in the first place?"

He shrugged. "Again, no answer." He was feeling a little more in control of himself, he decided. Maybe talking shop was keeping his mind off those creamy thighs being oh-so-innocently presented to him. He wondered what she'd do if he rolled up to her and laid a hand on that upraised knee, and then…

"Frank."

He blinked. "What?"

"Anna's connection to Lynch and the kids. You were saying?"

"I think she knew him before he left the Shop..." His skin prickled. He hadn't meant to say anything; that little tidbit, something Lynch had offered him at one of their clandestine meetings, had just floated up to the top of his head. _My god, I'm being steered._ "… but I don't know why. I could throw out ideas all day about Lynch and Anna and the kids and what they did to me. It's all just guesswork. And it doesn't change our mission. We'll get the real answers when we have them in hand. Look, Nicole, thanks for stopping by, but I'm really tired. I think-"

"You're not tired," she chuckled. "You're just trying to get rid of me. Okay, no more business." She stood and stepped to the bookcase that held his music collection. She ran her middle two fingertips over the shelved CD cases, a simple gesture that roughened his breath. "Compact discs. Funny. I was sure I'd see all your music stored on those huge black platters in the arty cardboard sleeves. What were they called?"

"LPs. And I did have a lot of my music on them, up until last year. Cassettes too."

She pulled one out and glanced at it. "Oh, right. Heard about that. Did she steal them or burn them?"

"A little of both. She was partial to heavy metal." He watched the gentle roll of her hips as she moved to the other side of the sound system and the rest of his collection. "I'd love to replace it all in vinyl, but some of it can't be had at any price."

"Why would you want to do that? Sentiment?"

"No." He shifted his legs slightly. He could feel the Glock in the holster sewn to the underside of the seat. He could reach it and point it in less than a second. Would it be fast enough? _Stop it. Even if you manage to put one between her eyes, what then? Run? You wouldn't get a hundred miles before they caught you. You might as well eat the bullet instead._ "On the right equipment, the sound quality's better. Lots. CDs have the capability, but they're not produced to the same standard. Too costly." _You're talking too much again,_ he realized with sudden alarm.

"Really." She smiled as she pulled out one jewel case after another and replaced it. "I haven't heard of most of these artists. They all look like they're at a costume party. Frank, do you own _anything_ that was written this century?"

He head-shrugged. "No."

"How about something _recorded_ this century?"

"Doubtful." He swallowed. "Like I said, Nicole, we've got nothing in common."

She selected one and opened it. One eyebrow lifted. "Well, this looks promising." She showed him the sepia-toned picture on the inside: a thighs-up front view of a Eurasian-featured black girl standing shirtless with her wrists clasped on top of her head. Her breasts were concealed somewhat by another pair of hands, male, cupping them from behind. Her jeans were unbuttoned, unzipped, and turned down, low enough to possibly expose pubic hair if she didn't shave it off – an uncommon practice at the time the picture was taken. She stared into the camera, one eye nearly concealed in the waves of shiny black hair that tumbled off her forehead. "She's very pretty, don't you think?"

He shrugged. The look in the photo subject's dark eyes was cool and challenging at the same time, attractive beyond sexual suggestion, and had prompted him to buy the album twelve years before, despite his usual distaste for pop divas; he was uncomfortably aware that Nicole's present regard of him was a close match. He said, "Back when she recorded that, I used to see guys in T-shirts that said, 'Heaven is a planet where every girl is Janet.'"

She smiled at that, and extracted the silvery disc and inserted it in the player. "You don't mind?" Without waiting for an answer, she turned it on and selected a track. Janet Jackson breathed out of the speakers:

_Like a moth to a flame_

_Being burned by the fire_

_My love is blind_

_Can you feel my desire?_

_That's the way love goes._

He'd always thought the opening of 'That's the Way Love Goes' was kind of hokey and overdone, an impossibly exaggerated description of desire; now, feeling Nicole's eyes heating his blood, the words seemed a perfect description of what was happening to him, and probably to any man caught in this girl's gravitational field.

The silky dance tune began, its rhythm building in a few beats to something that drew you along. Nicole clasped her wrists over her head, in imitation of the album picture, and twisted slowly to the music, her movements sinuous and erotic. Unbidden, an image rose in his mind of taking her breasts in his hands.

He gripped the chair arms tightly. "Didn't know you could dance."

Eyes softly closed, she smiled lazily. "This isn't dancing. It's just doing what comes naturally. Join me?"

The rocking of her hips drew his eyes against all determination. He forced his hands to the wheels and turned away from her, hoping it would help. But he couldn't will his hands to roll the chair any further. "That supposed to be funny?"

"No. Your therapist says you work hard, and she's very impressed with your progress. How badly do you need that chair, really?"

_She's been reading my med reports? Or extracting information from the people at the therapy center… _"If I lost a wheel and the house was on fire, I might make it to the door before it burned down."

"I think you could do better than that. Your thighs are still all muscly. I've been watching them flex." Her voice was in his ear. "And your upper body is even better than before the ambush, I think." She ran her fingertips down his left trapezius. "Hard as a rock."

He lost his breath at the indescribable sensation. His penis swelled and his buttocks tightened. He felt as if he'd just experienced ten minutes of foreplay in a second.

From the kitchen, a whistle rose.

Nicole said wryly, "How symbolic." She stepped past him, her derriere briefly close enough to kiss. "Do you always heat water in a teakettle?"

He worked his mouth to get some moisture in. "I'm old-fashioned."

She moved toward the kitchen. "You want tea, then? I can get it."

"Yeah." He could feel the sexual heat fading as she disappeared into the other room. "Bags in the… in the cupboard to the right of the stove."

The whistle died. He heard doors closing. "Big mug?"

"Yeah."

"How do you take it?"

"Teaspoon of sugar."

"I think I'll have some. Do you have…" He heard the fridge door open. "Nope." It closed again.

"Powder in the cupboard left of the sink." He was feeling almost normal now. She must be at the other end of the kitchen. He found he could roll the chair again, and jerkily backed it away from the kitchen door until he bumped into something.

"Come and get it, or bring it out?"

Keeping a kitchen table between them seemed like a good idea, but he couldn't force his hands to send the chair towards her. He swallowed. "Out here is good."

"Okay." Drawers rattled as she pulled them open and shut.

"The silverware drawer is-"

"Got it. I saw your girl Friday on her way out – Cheryl? She didn't see me, though. I've talked to her a few times. Polite, but not very friendly."

"Don't hold it against her."

"I don't. She doesn't like talking to me about you, is all. She's very protective, and worried for you. And more than a little jealous. You're more than a boss to her, you know."

"She told you all that?"

Amused, she said, "Well, she didn't _mean_ to. How strong do you like your tea?"

"Black." He didn't really, but he wanted to keep her in the kitchen for as long as possible.

"That case, I'll wait to pour mine." She came out of the kitchen empty-handed. She paused, unclasped an expensive-looking watch, and set it on the dining table, eyes locked on Colby's. He stopped breathing.

He dropped his forearms off the chair's armrests just before Nicole set her hands on them. She placed a knee on the seat between his thighs and leaned forward until her lips were an inch from his. Her hair swung down to brush his face and shoulders like heavy silk. His nose filled with the scent of flowers, and his lungs expanded and drew it in of their own accord. He could feel her body heat on his chest and belly and thighs. Almost whispering, she said, "The bus is at the stop, boy. The doors are open. Are you getting on or not?"

It was a choice that was no choice. His hands rose off the wheels and reached for her.

...

"So this is what it feels like." Lying in the disarranged bed, Nicole's head shifted slightly on Frank's bare shoulder as he snugged her up a little tighter against him. "Other girls talk about it sometimes. It's just as nice as they made it sound."

"What?" Frank's throat felt dry and raspy. He swallowed and drew a forearm across her, gently pinning her upper arms.

"I've never been held after. They're always afraid to touch me." She rubbed her cheek against his collarbone and let out a long breath. "I like."

Frank swallowed again and said nothing. He was holding Nicole Callahan for the same reason an exhausted prizefighter clinches his opponent: he felt at the very end of his strength, and was trying to avoid further punishment. His legs were on fire, and his knees were screaming; his lower back and buttocks were twitching with tiny muscle spasms. But those complaints were nothing compared to the deep sick ache in his testicles, as if the last orgasm had been physically wrung from them.

_The last one? How many…_ He tried to recollect. His last clear memory of any length was of snogging with Nicole in the living room, holding her sideways in his lap with her lower legs hanging off the arm of the wheelchair. Without a thought about impossibilities or consequences, he had gathered her into his arms, stood, and carried her into the bedroom.

Everything afterwards was fragmented and confusing, but very vivid: the feel of her skin and the play of her muscles underneath, her hair in his hands and on his skin, her voice as she whispered and chuckled and made other small sounds that shortened his breath. Pinning her wrists to the mattress, her look of surprise changing to a smile as his lips claimed hers. Moving together in half a dozen positions, sometimes inside her, sometimes not. _Four times,_ he decided. _At least._

The window, behind its heavy curtain, still glowed around the edges from daylight outside. She'd arrived just after nine, and it got dark early on this side of the mountains; it must be about six hours since she'd walked through his front door. _No wonder I'm wiped out_, he thought, trying to reassure himself_. She must not be planning to spend the night, thank God. If this is her idea of a nooner…_

But his exhaustion was more than physical. He felt a frightening disconnection from the world around him: it reminded him of a time he'd been gravely wounded, and the endorphins had been battling pain for mastery of his senses while numbing shock spread through his body, threatening to kill him faster than blood loss. His usually-exceptional situational awareness was gone, his sense of time folded on itself, his thinking labored. Only the pain in his body was real, that and the girl lying sated and sleepy in his arms.

"Don't usually do older guys," she murmured, eyes closed. "Ten years is my limit. Twenty, no way. Looked at you sometimes in the halls, sort of thought about it, but I let it drop. If I'd known what I was missing… saved you from all those crazy skanks." Her breathing slowed.

_Lie quiet. Let her fall asleep. Then maybe you can slip out of bed and get to the door. Don't bother with the wheelchair, or getting dressed. Just crawl out of the house and away._

_Just let her fall asleep._

"You smell like flowers," he murmured, almost too low for his own ears. He blinked in surprise.

She stirred, eyes still closed. "What?"

"Flowers," his traitor mouth said again, a little louder. "You, you smell like flowers."

She half-opened her eyes and tipped her head up. Her lips brushed his neck, and his whole body broke out in goosebumps as he shivered. "What kind of flowers?"

"Don't know," he squeezed out. "A garden."

"That is _so_ sweet." Her breath was warm in his ear; he stopped breathing. "I've had men tell me I smell like chocolate, or leather, or sandalwood. Even rain, once. I think it's different for each. Always something pleasant, but nothing girlish, you know? Till now." She smiled up at him. "Thank you." Then her smile became one of invitation, and her hand slid down his abdomen, and all the pain disappeared and he felt strong as ten men.

...

Frank lay alone in his bed, not sure how long he'd been awake. Or, rather, unsure whether he really was. He lay as motionless as possible, breathing shallowly; even the slightest movement brought a strange mix of present pain and remembered ecstasy. _How long has she been gone? _Gritting his teeth against the pain in his body and the strange sensation of smooth flesh gliding against his whenever he moved, he sent his hand jerkily to the sheets beside him. They were still warm. _Just left. That's why I came back, why I can think again. Can I reach the phone?_

The bedroom door swung open, letting in dim red-gold light. Nicole stood in the doorway wearing his shirt, which ended above mid-thigh. The light from the open doorway backlighted the garment, and showed clearly that she wore nothing underneath. In one hand she held a glass. "I brought you some water," she said. "I bet you're a little dry."

_Morning_, he thought. _Somehow, I made it through the night._ Relief and exhaustion flooded through him. He swallowed to wet his throat, with little success. "Thanks," he managed to get out. "But… you'd better start getting ready. Don't… want to be late for work."

She chuckled, a sound like dove's wings. "It's just sundown, darling. We still have all night." She glided into the room and shut the door, and darkness closed around him once more.

...

"I borrowed some clothes," she said. "They fit me like a tent, but they'll get me home to change."

Frank struggled to think. "Your dress. What…" He trailed off as his hands remembered the feel of ripping fabric.

She scoffed. "My beautiful and hideously expensive Ralph Lauren? As if I could ever wear it again. Maybe you can make dustcloths with what's left of it. I threw the underwear away already." Her lips curved in a gentle smile. "I had the best time last night. You're a wonderful lover, Frank. I'm _so_ glad I finally gave in to temptation with you." She bent over him. "Get some rest. And drink plenty of fluids." She stroked his abdomen with her fingertips.

His penis rose, ejaculated, and collapsed, all in about two seconds. He grunted in pain, feeling as if he'd been struck in the crotch with a hammer. His vision dissolved in a blizzard of black snow. When it cleared, he saw her staring down at him.

"Sorry," she said. "Didn't see that coming. You're _really_ sensitized." Her voice lowered. "I guess a good-bye kiss is out of the question."

"Gun under my chair," he mumbled. "Just shoot me instead."

She stilled. "You're not happy with me right now, I guess. But last night will look very different to you after you're feeling better. You'll see."

...

A man's voice brought him back to awareness. "_Christ._" Hands on his shoulders. "Frank. Talk to me."

"'Mokay, Gord," he muttered. "She gone?"

"Gone. Yeah. Can you move?"

"Don' want to. Thirsty."

"Is he okay?" Cheryl's voice, from the bedroom door. "God. The place _reeks_ of her."

"Wait." Gordon pulled the damp sheet up to Colby's armpits. "Can you bring in a glass of water? A big one." To Colby he said in a low voice. "I'm sorry, man. My crew was off shift last night. She was gone before we came. Assholes never even told us she'd been here."

"No matter," Colby mumbled, feeling very tired and removed from his surroundings. If only they would let him sleep…

"Here." Cher's voice again, gentle fingers at the back of his head, lifting. A glass at his lips. He gulped, water spilling from the corners of his mouth to run down his neck.

Gordon said, "Maybe you'd better leave, Cher."

"I've already seen him. I found him, remember? Just help me get him in the tub. I don't think he can stand up long enough for a shower."

"Don't," Colby said. "Just need rest."

"You'll rest better clean," she insisted.

"Damn," said a man from the doorway. "He looks like -"

"Gerick, shut _up_." She slid an arm under his shoulder and lifted. The sheet fell to his waist, and she whisked it away. He couldn't summon the energy for modesty, nor for a gasp when his back muscles seized. "Phil, help. Gerick, get his chair from the living room."

The wheelchair appeared. The three of them hoisted him into it, and she began pushing him towards the master bathroom. On the way, he slumped to the side, and she paused to right him.

They deposited him gently in the big tub, and Cheryl knelt beside it. Gerick said, "What next?"

"Go find some clean sheets for the bed," she said, turning on the taps and checking the mix. "Just bring them in, I'll take care of them." After the guard left, she said, "Phil, I'm pretty sure we don't need a chaperone."

"You'll need help to get him out."

"I'll call." When the man hesitated, she said, "This is my job. Go on."

The water rose, covering Colby's legs. The warmth was soothing, and he imagined he could hear his skin sucking up the moisture. The humid air felt heavy as a blanket on his chest and arms. He slid down a little; Cheryl watched him carefully, but didn't try to pull him up. When the water reached his ribs, she shut it off. She dipped a cloth, wrung it, and applied liquid soap from a bottle on the sill. She drew the rag across his shoulders.

The cloth was soft and slippery, and the touch of her hand through it was gentle as a caress. Nicole's scent lifted off Colby's skin. The head of his penis rose out of the water, bobbing in time with his pulse, and dry-fired. A tearing sensation passed through his entire body, and he couldn't see. He moaned, "Sorry." A tear ran down his cheek.

"Shh, it's okay, it's all right," she said softly, as if comforting a child.


	5. Speculation

Boulder Colorado

Tuesday November 28 2006

1049 hours

Gordon Phillips took a long and unusual detour between the squadroom and his quarters, one that led through Research Directorate offices. He turned down the corridor that went past Nicole Callahan's office with some vague notion of confronting her and delivering a black warning about risking Colby's life for her pleasure. He knew that putting his face into the wind of her personality was hazardous: if she wasn't in a receptive mood, she could extinguish his anger with a whisper – or probably stop his heart at the doorway, if things escalated to that point.

But he didn't think they would. Nicole Callahan was a live bomb, and he was sure her worldview was twisted more than a little by her upbringing and her power, but she was a very functional sociopath, level-headed and easy to deal with most of the time. She might tell him it was none of his business, but she wouldn't kill him for lecturing her about her little hobby. But he still felt like he was about to enter a lion's den unarmed as he approached her door.

The door was open, a sure sign Nicole was in. He poked his head around the jamb, and what he saw was so unexpected he ducked back and almost checked the room number before he looked back inside.

Nicole sat listlessly behind her desk, chin in one hand propped up by an elbow on the desktop. The other hand was curled around her coffee mug. She was staring unseeing past her terminal at the wall beside the door striker, unmindful of Phillips' intrusion. Her usual poise and latent energy were nowhere evident; she seemed drained, worn down, absent. And … Phillips realized with a start that something else was missing as well: looking her over wasn't making him scared and horny. She was still a beautiful girl, but her eyes and body didn't pull at his mind like they usually did.

She looked up at him and offered a wan smile. "Morning, Gordon. Just getting off?"

Even though he wasn't, he nodded, all the words he'd prepared gone from his head. "You okay, Nicole?"

"Am _I_ okay?" She stared down into her mug, as if just noticing it. She took a sip, tipping it so far back he knew it was almost empty, and made a face. "How's Frank?"

"He'll be all right, I think. I didn't think so when I first found him, but he's a tough sonofabitch. Doubt he'll make it in today, though." He stepped into her office. "Want a warmup on that?" He reached for the mug in her hand.

She hastily set it down with a clunk and snatched her hand away. "_Gordon_." When he stopped short, she pushed it towards him with one finger. "Are _you_ okay? It's not like you to forget protocol."

He felt a strange moment of sympathy for this bright, beautiful girl who experienced men around the Shop treated like a leper. Then he remembered why. He picked up the mug. It still contained an inch of cold, beige-colored brew. "I don't know. You just seem different today."

"Different how?"

He shrugged. "I'm not sure. Safer, somehow." He searched for a proper descriptive, and said, almost apologetically, "Not… hungry."

A shadow of the usual cool amusement returned. "Hungry. Well. Right now, the thought of food makes me a little queasy. I feel like I was at a bachelorette party all night. Then came in early to spar with Matt before work. I can't remember ever feeling so beat up. Your boss is an animal." She looked at the cup in Gordon's hand and made a beckoning motion. Cautiously, he extended it towards her, and she took it by the rim without touching him. She took a final sip and passed it back the same way. "You remember how I take it?"

"Four creams, five sugars." He smiled and shook his head. "You drink Diet Pepsi, but you have to turn your coffee to syrup before you'll touch it."

"A cute little eccentricity, don't you think? You bring that back, and maybe we'll talk a little before I report to my boss."

…

Nicole parted the conference room doors and marched down the length of the glossy black table to where Ivana sat waiting. "Mission accomplished. I delivered your bonus, as ordered."

The Chief Director of International Operations looked up from her laptop and closed it. "Don't take that tone with me, dear. I'm sure it was no great imposition, and besides, it was just a suggestion."

Nicole set her full mug on the table, slopping a little to form a ring underneath. "Mother, I've never mistaken one of your orders for a _suggestion_."

She knew, of course, that Ivana Baiul wasn't her biological mother; probably hadn't even slept with her father, though of course one couldn't be sure. But Nicole Callahan's most powerful childhood memory, from when she was six years old, was of the door of that horrible scary place finally opening, and stumbling, naked and terrified, into this woman's arms and being borne away amid the shrieking alarms.

She knew now that the circumstances of that 'rescue' were very different from what she'd imagined as a child. But, looking at her boss now, Nicole could vividly recall her first scent of Ivana's perfume – not the one she wore now – and the woman stooping to reach for her as if little Nikki was a treasure she'd been searching for all her life. Strong arms around her, lifting, and she'd wrapped arms around Ivana's neck and clung. The woman's voice cooing assurances as she'd carried the child past the dead men on the floor.

Ivana Baiul had been Nicole's source of comfort and order for as long as she could remember. Nicole supposed they even loved each other, in a careful and limited sort of way. In a softer tone she said, "But you're right about it being no imposition. I had my doubts at first, but it turned out to be a very enjoyable night."

The Director's sculpted eyebrows lifted. "You spent the night? Is he…"

She sat in one of the big black-leather chairs. "Hardly. He's weak, but he'll recover."

"It's good you went so easy on him. I was a little concerned when I thought you were just going to give him an hour of your time. If I had known you were going to do such a thorough job, I'd have warned you more sternly against using him up."

"Hm." Nicole picked up her mug in both hands and sipped from it.

"Well?"

"Well what?"

"What was he like?"

Nicole felt her eyebrows gather. "Are you asking me…"

"I suppose I am. Just curious."

_Oh, Mother. As if you'd touch a man I've been with. You look at them like they're spoiled meat._ "Unusual."

"Unusual."

"He's very resistant for a non-Special. And once he succumbed, he … didn't treat me like other men." She sipped again and held the mug to her lips, letting the silence stretch, oddly reluctant to go on.

"If you don't want to talk about it, that's fine, Nikki. But you're not acting yourself either. Did something happen?"

"Of _course_ something happened." She set the cup down, startled by her reaction. _Now you have to tell her. Right now, before she decides you need fixing._ "He took me completely by surprise. He's in much better shape than that wheelchair would lead you to think. He was actually a little rough with me. That's happened before, but I didn't expect it last night, not with him. It was different. I liked it, and I wanted more. I realized I was pushing him harder than I'd planned. I tried to back off, but he kept…" She struggled for a word. "Challenging me."

"Challenging you."

"I could tell I was hurting him, but he just kept taking it, taking _me_, and I couldn't stop. I had to… sort of hold him back instead, to keep him from… until I barely felt in control of myself. It wore me out. That's why I'm not feeling well today, I think."

"You said it was an enjoyable night."

She stared into her cup. "The sex was very good. And he was good to me afterward. That doesn't happen often. I liked it, a lot. The exhaustion didn't hit me until after it was over." She took another sip. "I'm … sort of considering a rematch."

Ivana's eyebrows lifted. Nicole had never indulged in a second night with anyone, being sure that the risk to the man would be far greater on a second encounter. There was no need when there were plenty of untried males to choose from. "Nicole, be careful. He's still very useful. I don't want to lose him."

"You told me that yesterday. Have I ever failed you?"

"Once." Ivana leaned forward. "You never explained your failure to seduce Jack's son."

"Yes I did. He's immune, like his father. I couldn't get anywhere with him."

"Nicole, do you own a mirror?"

She set her mug down with a thump. "Every girl in school had looks enough to lure him. And my power put me at a complete disadvantage."

"_Dis_advantage?"

Nicole wobbled her head from side to side in frustration. "What do _I_ know about the whole silly mating dance? I see a man I want, I call to him, he comes to me. End of courtship. Every girl at Darwin was a more accomplished flirt than I am. But Bobby never showed more than casual interest in any of them until Sarah came to school."

"How did that make you feel, watching him moon after your half-sister after you'd failed with him? Especially when she didn't want him?"

"It made me sure that boys are morons about sex, and grateful I didn't have to learn how to handle them the way other girls did." She wrapped her hands around her mug and looked into it. "Well, maybe it bothered me a little. But the way Matt watched over her bothered me more. I've never seen him like that with any girl but me."

"It made you jealous?"

"It made me nervous. She has a power over men that doesn't come from I/S Effect. Maybe it's the challenge of a woman they can't have that pulls them to her, I don't know. But it could be dangerous." She sipped at her mug. "I thought I had Bobby once, before she showed up. But I must have said or done something. His interest cooled like that-" she snapped her fingers "-and I never got a better shot. Do we have any pictures of Frank at twenty?"

Ivana drew her eyebrows together at the apparent change of subject. "There ought to be something in his dossier. He'd likely be in his Army uniform. Why?"

"Because I'd like to see if the resemblance to Bobby is real or in my head. He was Uncle Jack's favorite, right?"

"Yes, and they are similar. But Jack was Frank's friend and mentor years before he found his son and knew what Bobby looked like. Coincidence."

"Or the result of factors beyond our present understanding, as Dr. Ivery says." She turned the nearly-empty mug in her hands. "Maybe I'm drawn to him because he represents a sort of second chance at the one who got away. I wouldn't like that." She pushed the mug away. "People think I'm some heartless black widow, I know. But I have feelings. I like men. I like what they do for me in bed, but I like them as people too. I sleep around, but that's more for their protection than anything else. It's dangerous for me to like one man too much.

"A year ago, I was people-watching at some mall in Minnesota, and this twenty-something couple walking down the aisle passed me by. Only, they weren't really a couple. The man was loaded down with shopping bags from women's stores, walking three steps behind her like a slave. She was yapping away on her celly, not even looking back at the poor man. He tried to ask her something, and she screwed up her face and flapped her hand at him to shut him up without even pausing her phone conversation. I felt so sorry for him. It was obvious he was nothing to her, that he hadn't gotten a moment's pleasure from her company in years."

She picked up her mug and drained it. "I sometimes wonder how long she kept walking down that corridor before she noticed he wasn't following, and whether she backtracked in time to find her bags where he dropped them on the floor."

"_I_ wonder what kind of explanation he gave her when he got home."

"He never got home, actually."

"Oh. Like that?"

She stood and pushed her chair in. "I tried a little too hard to make him happy. It was for the best that way, don't you think?" She turned for the door.

"Nicole."

She turned back. Ivana looked at her over steepled fingers. "What does it feel like, when that happens?"

It occurred to Nicole that a witness might have thought the Director's question incredibly insensitive. But she and Ivana knew each other better than that. But the question was difficult to answer, just the same.

She found herself in a quandary familiar to any Special who tried to explain the sensory perceptions associated with the use of his power, especially to a 'normal' with no similar experience to compare it to. She had never been able to satisfactorily describe the life force she could sense in people, or how it seemed to reach for her whenever she got close. How could she tell anyone what it was like to coax - or force – a man far past what he could safely share using the most intense sexual experience of his life, to sense that soul-numbing pleasure squeezing the life force from him like paint from a tube? To feel that strange light inside him, that she could somehow sense but not see, swell unbearably and then stream into her, leaving behind a dark empty husk sighing out its final breath? Filling her and illuminating her from the inside out, and then bursting like fireworks inside her and disappearing to God knows where?

"Incredible," she told Ivana. "Orgasm can't compare."

Friday June 27 2003

Darwin Academy

Robert Lane knocked on the frame of the open door and poked his head in to look at the girl behind the desk. "Miss Callahan?"

The Dean of Women wrinkled her nose, smiling. "Ecch. You've _got_ to promise me you won't call me 'Miss Callahan' ever again, _Mister_ Lane. It sounds like a name for a spinster schoolteacher or something. I'm Nicole, kay?"

"Kay, Nicole." He offered her a smile of his own, and stepped in. "And I'm Bobby. I know it sounds stupid, but I'm used to it."

"It doesn't sound stupid at all." The smile changed in a way that made Bobby feel warm and welcome past mere politeness. "I think it shows you're not insecure. And why should you be? Who'd mistake _you_ for a little boy?" She stood and rounded the desk, then leaned her butt against it with her hands gripping the edge, giving him a good look at her.

Bobby swallowed. He'd only been here for a week, and hadn't got to know too many people. His pod was more than half empty, presently housing just him and two girls, who were also the only other occupants of his classroom. Bobby had met a few people from the other pods at lunch and after classes, though, and he'd already heard some awestruck comments about Nicole Callahan. He saw that the guys who'd described her hadn't exaggerated. She made school-issue coveralls look very, very good.

"Speaking of which," she went on, "happy sixteenth. It's Tuesday, isn't it? July first?"

"Wow. You know everybody's birthdays?"

"I'm trying. I've got all the girls down, now I'm working on the boys. Things like that are important to people, after all, and remembering makes them feel like they belong." Her eyelashes drooped. "Don't you agree?"

Even though he didn't, he found himself nodding. "Not really sure of the date, actually. It was just the doctor's best guess. I'm a foundling."

"In that case, maybe you should opt for July fourth instead. Celebrate with everybody else."

He shrugged. "Don't celebrate it, usually. Just a day." He liked the way she'd taken his statement about being a foundling in stride and run with it instead of offering him false sympathy.

"You're turning _sixteen_ next week." She folded her arms, pushing her breasts up and almost out of her coverall. He couldn't help glancing at the tab of her zipper, which was pulled down so low it seemed impossible that her bra wasn't showing. "That's something to celebrate. Worth a couple of presents, at least."

He cleared his throat. "What was it you wanted to see me about?"

She smiled. "Nothing big, Bobby. We just like to have a little chat with each new student once you've had a week to settle in, just to see how you're doing. You're Matt's job, really, but he's got a ton of other stuff to do right now, so I offered to interview a few of the boys."

Bobby nodded again. "Well, hey, I'm doing great. Caitlin and Roxanne are a lot brainier than I am, but Mister Carew and the others make sure I don't get left behind." He didn't mention how much sleep that effort was costing him, or how far behind he'd started from. Matt, Nicole's brother and the Dean of Men, had told him another boy and girl would be arriving to join his pod shortly; maybe they'd bring down the curve a little and slow the pace. "Caitlin's helping me a lot, too."

"Good. I'm sure you'll catch right up before long. Are you getting along with the other kids in school?"

He put on a smile. "The ones I've met are great." _Haven't gotten into a fistfight with any of them yet._

"How about the girls in your pod?" Her voice turned teasing. "Have they noticed you're a guy?"

Her voice was pleasing and kind of musical and strangely familiar, almost as if he'd heard it before. His smile widened and became real. "Hope not. If Kat notices I'm a guy, she might stop talking to me. And I don't think any guy could keep up with Rox." _That's it. Her voice reminds me of Rox. Not the same pitch, but they both turn ordinary talk into music. _

"Think either of them will throw you a party?"

He shrugged. "Like I said, I don't, really."

"Hm." She regarded him, the corners of her lips curving up. Her appraisal made him feel self-conscious and kind of… _expectant_. "Bobby, let me take you to dinner tonight. An early birthday present."

"Take me to dinner? I thought…"

She chuckled. "You're right, there's not a restaurant within a day's walk. But faculty and staff quarters has its own dining room. The food's the same, but the ambiance is more like a real restaurant. Dinner doesn't sound like feeding time at the zoo. We could take a table in the corner and eat in peace and quiet, just the two of us."

He swallowed. A dinner date with Nicole Callahan. "Wouldn't that be against the rules?"

"There aren't any rules about students dating staff." She grinned. "I should know. Matt and I would be the ones to write them. And I'm sure Dean Hardesty doesn't care so long as studies don't suffer. We're only talking about sharing a meal, after all. Teachers eat in the student cafeteria, don't they?" She cocked her head. "If you're thinking being seen together might start talk…." She seemed to have an idea. "You know, we could just eat at my place, if you want more privacy. My quarters are three rooms, about the size of a hotel suite or a small apartment. I've got a little two-seat table in one corner. Sometimes I take a meal there when I'm feeling solitary. The commissary delivers to staff quarters if you ask nicely."

Bobby wasn't in the habit of dating girls he didn't know well, but, even discounting her looks, Nicole was easy to like, and a hard person to say 'no' to. And if word got out among the guys here that he'd turned down a Friday-night offer of dinner alone in Nicole's room, the hazing might never end. "Well, I…"

A deep chime sounded behind him. His attention turned to a big grandfather clock standing against the wall next to the door; he hadn't noticed it when he'd stepped in because his eyes had already been full of Nicole. It looked like an antique, with elaborate carvings on the dark wood cabinet that made it resemble a Greek temple, and a brass face with intricate details that looked hand-painted. Underneath, behind a tall glass pane, a fancy brass pendulum swung back and forth in front of an assortment of chime tubes. A pair of weights fashioned to resemble pine cones hung from chains of unequal length. "Nice clock," he said, as it continued to strike four in its deep metallic voice.

Nicole nodded, smiling. "Like it? It's a Walter Durfee, made in Providence for Tiffany and Company. I paid thirty thousand dollars for it at auction."

"Wow."

She passed by him to approach the clock, close enough to sense body heat and catch a whiff of her shampoo. The clock stood a foot taller than she did; she smiled up into its face. "It's beautiful, don't you think?" She touched the glass that covered the face. "Made in eighteen-ninety."

"Wow," Bobby said again. "And still running."

"I fixed it," she said, still facing it.

Something in her tone drew his eyebrows together. "Really. Wasn't working when you got it?"

"Oh, it was working just like when it was built. The hands were going around and dividing the day into hours." Her voice changed, lost its honey. "But it gained time for two weeks after you wound it, over a minute, and lost it again as the weights approached their stops. That's why you're supposed to wind it on a schedule, so you can tell how far off it is by knowing when you last wound it. Ridiculous. I looked inside at the works. It was full of little brass wheels, dozens of them, no two the same size, all running at different speeds, not even in the same direction. Stopping and starting and clicking like it was full of bugs. A complete mess. It made my head buzz to look at it. Even after I closed it up again, I could still see it. So I fixed it."

Something felt very wrong here, as if the floor had tilted a tiny bit. "Fixed it."

She nodded, still facing the clock. She touched its face again. "The hands are driven by a DC motor now, and it gets a time signal every few seconds by satellite. Millisecond accurate all the time, and doesn't need winding at all." She shook her head. "The man I hired to do the work almost begged me for the old insides, can you imagine? I broke them up with my own hands, to make sure they'd never bother anyone again." She touched the lower cabinet, the one with the weights and chimes and swinging pendulum. "All just props now. The ticking and the notes come out of a speaker. Nobody can tell the difference. It's just like before, only better. Much better."

"Nicole-"

"That's how you fix things," she said, her voice gone soft and distant. "If you want to do it right. You have to get inside and pull everything out, leave nothing behind. Then you decide what you want it to do and what you don't want it to do. You draw up a plan, the simplest design you can come up with that gets the job done, no confusing extras to make its behavior unpredictable. You can't risk that. You study every single part that came out, and if it doesn't have any place in the plan, you get rid of it. If you need it, but it looks worn or weak or unreliable in some other way, you replace it with something that performs the same function, but does it right. When you're done, you have something that's completely different than what it looks like, but it's better than the original could ever have been. That's the way to do it. You've got to."

She turned back to him, smiling brightly. "Good grief, listen to me going on about my little toy. Sorry. I promise to be more entertaining tonight. What time is good for you?"

Bobby relaxed his facial muscles, let all the expression out, giving away nothing; put on the face that had saved him from half a dozen beatings during his twelfth and thirteenth years when Mr. Grant was wound up over something and looking for a disrespectful little heathen to straighten out. "Nicole, like I said, I don't do birthdays. And I think word would get out no matter how cautious we were. I'm flattered, but no, thanks." He fought the urge to back out of the room rather than turning.

"Wait." She reached for his hand and grabbed it, staring hard into his eyes. "You don't really mean that, do you?"

"I'll kick myself later, but yeah." He tugged his hand from her grip. "Thanks for… thanks."

As he walked down the corridor to commons, he thought about that weird little exchange. He didn't know what Nicole had been talking about besides clocks, but it had raised the hairs on his neck and forearms. And by her look of utter disbelief as he had pulled his hand free and turned for the door, you'd have thought Nicole Callahan had never been turned down in her life. The girl was very hot, but she was full of herself and not right in the head. He hoped some other guy's birthday was coming up soon.

…

Boulder Colorado

Tuesday November 28 2006

1206 Hours

Frank's phone burred, dragging him out of slumber. He was surprised to find himself on the couch and dressed. Had he done that, or had Cher settled him here before she left for Central?

The phone rang again, drifting across the end table's surface as it buzzed. He picked it up, checking the time (just after noon) and the number, which wasn't in his directory. He briefly considered ignoring it, then connected. "Hello?"

"_Good morning, Frank._" Nicole's cheery voice raised the hair on Colby's forearms. "_Feeling better yet?_"

"It's afternoon," he said. "What do you want, Nicole?"

"_Well, that's a fine way to talk to a girl you slept with just the night before_," she said, unfazed. "_What, now that you got what you wanted, you don't have to be nice anymore?_"

"I'm in no mood for jokes."

"_Neither am I, really_," she said, voice serious now. "_I think we need to talk._"

"I don't. Goodbye, Nicole."

"_Don't__, Frank_," she said, voice pitched high, almost shrill; he froze. Something about her tone made him think of a helo's threat indicator, the alarm that warned you when a missile radar was locked on. In a lower tone she went on, "_If you won't talk to me on the phone, Frank, I'll come to your house. And once I'm at your door, you're going to let me in. You know that, don't you?_"

His breath shortened at the thought of opening his door to find her standing there, and his hands grew warm from the memory of her. "Yeah."

Pleasant again, she said, "_But if it comes to that, I don't think either of us will be in a mood to talk. So how about we just stay on the line, and be civil and rational together._"

He softly let out a breath. "Okay."

"_Back to my first question. Are you feeling better?_"

"I can speak in complete sentences. Clearly I'm feeling better."

"_Also, clearly, you're not all the way back yet, Mister Grumpy. Do you need anything?_"

"Just rest, and quiet."

"_I refuse to take the hint. Is Cheryl with you?_"

"I don't know. I just woke up." He added, "I think she was here earlier."

"_She was. I talked with Gordon. Listened to him mostly, actually. You have some very loyal people, Frank._"

"He's on my bodyguard detail. It's only natural he'd be concerned with me dying on him." His grip on the phone tightened. "I did almost die, didn't I?"

"_It wasn't as close as you think,_" she said. On her end of the line, something changed, the background or her breathing, as if she was no longer sitting but walking somewhere. "_I told you, Frank, I like you. I wasn't about to risk losing you._" She paused. "_Well. I really was just checking in on you. I should let you get some more rest. We can talk for real later._"

"Do you always do post-action surveys on your victims?"

She tittered. "_Save this number in your directory, it's my personal. You'll want to call me before long." _She disconnected.

IO Central HQ

Boulder

1215 Hours

Cheryl drifted through Director Colby's big office, ostensibly picking up and organizing for his return. Actually she was just drifting. Her thoughts were all about him, prompted by surroundings where they had spent so much time together, usually alone. A montage of memories and impressions filled her mind: her instant attraction to the tall blond hunk, looking so serious and thoughtful in his expensive suit and junior-executive specs as he strode past her and Ferris in the corridor during her first week at Central, before she knew who he was; her nervous excitement, sitting across a table from him in this very office when he had interviewed her for a job. Watching him work, turning over leads and going through things in his head in a way that made her believe he was thinking several things at once, his easy smile, and the confidence in the way he moved. Wondering what he would be like in bed.

Not long after Cheryl had started work for him, Frank had come up behind her while she was reviewing the Westminster Mall footage. Her breath had hitched when he had leaned over the back of her chair to share the image on her terminal. Whenever she thought of that moment, she could still smell a hint of his aftershave, and the pressure of his hand on the back of her chair, and the warmth of his cheek nearly touching hers. It was at that moment, she was certain, that she had decided that if Frank Colby ever made a pass at her, the horror stories about his prior relationships weren't going to be enough to keep her from going along with whatever he had in mind.

Cheryl paused, with her eye on the door to the office, thinking of when a gang of Ruche's security people had come unsmiling through it and gathered up Frank's computer and the contents of his desk – and her. The next several hours had been spent zip-tied naked into a chair, surrounded by silent strangers, too terrified for embarrassment. After a time, Ruche and Director Baiul themselves had come to interrogate her, and their questions had made it clear that Frank was suspected of knowing things about Lynch and his runaways that he wasn't sharing with his bosses, and that Cheryl, being his direct subordinate and a party to his investigations, was just as guilty – and less protected.

She had done her best for Frank – and for herself – answering with full honesty yet working hard to portray him as a dedicated man, utterly loyal to the organization, who simply liked to play his cards close to his vest. After a long sweaty time, the First Director and Security Advisor had left, leaving her wondering if she had managed to buy her life with her words, and hoping desperately that her statements hadn't cost Frank his.

Another interminable wait, enduring the silent stares of her guards, and then two more of Ruche's men had arrived. They had cut her free and given her a set of scrubs to wear; she had put them on as they watched, still too frightened for modesty. Then all the men had left the room, leaving her still wondering what was going to happen to her, and what had happened to Frank.

She found out twenty-four hours later. She hadn't any way of measuring the passage of time except by the state of her belly and bladder, but it seemed a very long time before the door to her holding cell opened again. Her guards, as menacing as ever, had taken her out without a word of explanation and marched her to her room, which looked like a cyclone had blown through it. "You're meeting with the Director," the man leading her escorts had said. "Get cleaned up." He had stayed with her every moment, even watching through the open bathroom door as she relieved herself, brushed her teeth and showered.

"Is this really necessary?" She had finally asked him as she wet down, standing in the tub with the curtain drawn back.

"She said to watch you every second," the man replied. "It doesn't pay to _interpret_ the Director's orders." He added, "Your boss found _that_ out, for sure."

A chill had gone through her. "What happened to him?"

But the man, sensing he had already said too much, had just shaken his head. "Make sure you use plenty of deodorant," he'd said. "You're going to do some sweating before this is over."

After her second meeting with Ivana Baiul, Cheryl had left the office unescorted, but feeling no less a prisoner. Ruche's sketchy account of Colby's arrest and quick return to Ivana's good graces – sketchy both ways, being suspiciously sparse and too self-serving to be trustworthy – sent her to Central's hospital wing.

She hadn't been allowed to enter his room, just observe him through a glass wall. She had needed to read the sign above the bed to be sure it was him. He had been surrounded by machines. Most of what she could see of him had been covered in casts and dressings. He looked like he had been dropped out of a helicopter from twenty feet up and then rolled down a mountainside. It seemed nothing short of a miracle that the man was still alive, and her heart had risen into her throat as she listened to the monitor beeping its steady rhythm, wondering if he would live, and what would be left of him afterward.

That feeling was very different from the chill fear that had grown inside her this morning on her return to Colby's house. She had called on her way there, but he hadn't answered. The house had been still and quiet when she had entered; he hadn't called his usual greeting, always delivered before she was ten steps inside the door. She had dropped her bag into the spare bedroom and begun looking for him.

His wheelchair had been sitting empty in the living room. On the floor beside it lay a pair of women's panties.

She had found him in the bedroom, but she had frozen, staring at him for what seemed like an eternity, before she could bring herself to approach and examine him. In the hospital, Frank Colby had looked like he was fighting for his life; lying crookedly in his own bed, staring blankly at the ceiling, he had looked like a corpse, and not a fresh one.

She pushed that memory aside and looked around the office, trying to orient herself and regain her balance. Her eyes lit on the 'glory wall' beside his door, adorned with photographs and a glass cabinet full of awards. She had never given it a close look, feeling somehow embarrassed to do so when her boss was in the room. Even though such shrines were usually meant for visitors to admire, its placement beside the door, where he would see it all the time as he worked but a visitor would only get a look at it when he left, had made her think that Frank meant for it not to be examined closely by anyone but himself.

The awards in the case were an odd assortment: there were a number of first- and second-place awards from Operations Directorate's annual combat skills competitions, but also a certificate mounted on a wooden plaque from some civic organization to "Officer Francis Colby." Beside it was a blurry photocopied award, a form certificate with lines for filling in the awardee's name, from 'Division Three' to Sergeant Frank 'Spookums' Colby, conferring on him, for services beyond the call of duty, the status of 'Honorary Texan,' which it seemed Frank had thought important enough to have mounted.

A pair of items mounted on blue velvet inside picture frames side by side on the bottom shelf of the cabinet caught her eye, and she bent to examine them closely: a Distinguished Service Medal and an Eagle Scout badge. She scoffed. _So he really __was__ a Boy Scout_.

The pictures on the walls were a surprise as well. Normally, such a display would have photo after photo of the subject rubbing shoulders with celebrities of one stripe or another, and pics of him shaking hands with someone while they held a trophy or award between them. There was none of that; in fact, more than half the photographs didn't have Frank in them at all. Many of the scenes were strange and indecipherable, the people in them engaged in activities not immediately clear or easily recognized. She decided that these pictures stirred memories for her boss that he didn't share with strangers. She noted that there were no images of single women among Frank's mementos.

There was one notable exception, one picture near the center of the display that did show Frank in the company of a celebrity – a celebrity at International Operations, at least. Under the roof of an open shed somewhere, Frank, dressed in hunter's camo, sat loading a magazine for an M16 lying across his lap. The man sitting across from him, similarly dressed and apparently having just slapped a mag into his own rifle, was John Lynch with a patch over his left eye. She applied her investigator's eye to the two men in the picture, to their postures and facial expressions, and felt sure that they were involved in something rather more serious than a hunting trip.

Conversation between a man and woman in the anteroom just outside the office drew her attention. The first voice belonged to Will, the detached Razor who manned the desk and whose job was primarily to give anybody trying to see Frank uninvited a hard time. But he didn't sound like he was trying to chase away whoever he was talking to; in fact, his voice was deep and smooth, unusually expressive and filled with good humor, almost… _flirty_. Then she heard the girl's voice, and though she had never heard it before, was suddenly certain who it belonged to. Her hand dropped to her holstered sidearm as she stalked into the anteroom.

Will, a forty-year-old man whose usual demeanor resembled a German shepherd in a junkyard, was sitting behind his desk grinning up at his visitor like a crushing schoolboy. The girl, dressed as Cheryl was, in IO's casual black-and-gray uniform, smiled down at him with one palm on his desk. They looked his way, and Will blushed.

"Wilhelm," Nicole Callahan said sweetly, "would you be a darling and fetch me a Diet Pepsi from the breakroom? Take your time, Cheryl and I need to have a little talk."

Cheryl's palm was still on the grip of her nine-millimeter. Her fingers curled around it as the man left. Then Nicole turned to her, and a sudden wave of sanity broke over her, washing away her rage. _What was I thinking? I can't hurt her. What am I even angry with her about? Because it was her, and not me? How petty. _Her hand dropped off her gun to hang at her side. "I, uh…"

Nicole shook her head. "You're thinking of apologizing. Don't. Your remorse would disappear as soon as I left the room." Her eyelashes lowered, and the air seemed to change. "There. Hate me again?"

Cheryl flushed, her anger returned and reinforced by having been manipulated. But she kept her hand off her sidearm. "With every fiber of my being."

The black-haired femme fatale nodded. "Good. I was expecting a harder time getting past Frank's watchdog. Had the charm dialed up a little high."

"Frank's not here. Will has nothing to guard but an empty office."

"And you. He likes you, but he can't decide whether to adopt you or make a pass at you, since it's plain you have no problem with older men. I suppose if you weren't so obviously fixated on your boss, the choice would be easier."

"What do you want?"

"We need to reach an understanding." Nicole lifted her knee and rested a thigh on the edge of the desk. "You think you know what happened last night. You think I raped your boss, mind-fucked him, and left him for dead. Don't you?"

"What do _you_ think you did, you fucking bitch?"

Unfazed, Nicole said, "I came to Frank Colby's house to offer him a satisfying little bed session as a reward for his loyalty, and a sort of apology from the Director for misjudging him." She looked past Cheryl's shoulder at the wall, a creepy little smile on her face. "It started out very … clinical, but it didn't stay that way. Something very unexpected happened. I won't try to describe it. I'll only say that he made it very hard for me to leave. I spent the night, and by the time I left, he wasn't the only one who was exhausted."

"You look fine to me."

Nicole smiled. "Thank you. Been working on it. Drinking a gallon of fluids and eating pills by the handful. You should have seen me when I came in this morning." The smile fell off her face. "That wasn't the only thing different about being with him. I'm feeling … disinclined to let things between us end there."

Cheryl felt her limbs cool as the blood left them, and gooseflesh travel up her arms. "You'll kill him."

"I don't think so. A second time doesn't have to be as … spectacular as the first. There's a limit to how kind and gentle I can be. But he's tougher than you give him credit for. And I know he's thinking about a rematch too, all risks aside."

Cheryl's voice came out flat as the report from a suppressed pistol. "You do."

"Uh huh. Spoke with him on the phone this morning." She looked up at her. "We're going to be in a relationship. If you can't deal with that, request a transfer, anyplace you want, and I'll pull whatever strings it takes to make it go through."

Cher's eyelids drooped. "Razors?"

"If you pass the physical and other qualifications."

"How about an X-Team?"

Nicole sighed. "I'm making you a genuine offer. Don't be impossible. Only one woman ever got into an Expeditionary Team. She earned it, but she wouldn't have got a shot if her sponsor wasn't someone Director Santini trusted with his life."

"I'm not going anywhere, Nicole. Someone's got to be ready to pick him up and put him back together when you're finished with him."

Nicole regarded her for a long moment. "Well," she finally said, "there are less worthy ambitions than being Frank Colby's rebound girl, I suppose. It's nice to know that at least one person thinks Frank will still be around when I'm done with him." She stood. "You've got a gym bag in one of the spare bedrooms."

Cheryl had brought the bag when she had returned to Colby's house; she had dropped it in the room he had suggested, then gone looking for her boss. She'd found him, and hadn't given it a thought since. "I'll get it out. Or you can just throw it away."

"Actually, I was going to suggest you just take that room for your own. Put some clothes in the closet, a toothbrush in the bathroom. Start planning to spend nights there."

Cheryl scowled. "What?"

"I can't be with him all the time. The job will keep us apart for days at a time, and … well, that's probably for the best anyway. He's still going to need someone, maybe more than ever." She shrugged, holding Cheryl's eyes. "I'm not the jealous type, Cher. You two are close, and I'm sure you'll get closer if you stay. I'm okay with that."

"Because you think I don't have a chance of taking him away from you?"

"Not even if you sleep with him," Nicole agreed.

…

At mealtimes, the Shop's spacious cafeteria tended to segregate by gender. In most group settings where people do not all know one another well, there are usually minorities who tend to stick together; at IO, women were that minority, and shared tables readily even if they were strangers. At the six-seater where Cheryl sat, the seat beside her was occupied by Ferris Mars, a friend she had acquired since her transfer to Boulder. Directly across from Cheryl sat Barbara Loews, an old friend from the Intelligence Directorate, lately transferred, like Cheryl, from the Miami office.

Beside Babs and opposite Ferris sat a tall, athletic-looking blonde, eating from a tray loaded with more calories than Cheryl would likely consume in a week. Though Cher had never met her, she recognized her name: Christine Blaze. Cher had felt a strange thrill run through her when Ferris had made introductions, because Christie Blaze was the girl she and Nicole had briefly discussed just an hour before.

Babs recognized her too. "So, you're really an Expeditionary? What's _that_ like?"

"Nn hn," The girl said, eyes on her tray. "Not much to talk about." Her tone was casual, but her meaning clear: _there's not much I can talk about._

"What about the guys, are they cute?"

"Some," she admitted. "How many depends on whether you think scars are sexy. And whether you've got an age bias. You'd get a surprise if you got hold of some of their driver's licenses and read their birthdates."

Babs shook her head. "It's ridiculous. Guys outnumber us four to one here. Who'd guess it'd be so hard to fill your dating pool?"

"There are plenty of men a girl from Planning can date, if you're not looking for something long-term," Ferris said. "If you like guys in uniform, pick up your service pistol and head down to the range. Plenty of Security guys go down there. You probably need to qual anyway, now you're at Central. I know things are a little looser at the regional offices, but here you need to know which end the bullet comes out of. "

Christie said, "I had a guy in Security hit on me down there this morning." She scoffed. "He was firing at a standard target, no virtual motion, no difficulty upgrades. Half his shots weren't even inside the rings. What a loser."

"Must have been one of Gerry's Kids," said the chestnut-haired woman. "We don't call them 'Security' around here. Surprised you found one at the range."

"Well, like you said, everybody's got to qual here."

"So, Cher," Ferris said, lifting a forkful of greens to her mouth, "do you want to talk about it?"

Cheryl looked up from the food she had been listlessly pushing around her plate. "Talk about what?"

"Men are shameless gossips, especially when one of them is getting some. Some of Colby's security guys talk to my guys, and my guys talk to me."

Christie raised an eyebrow. Babs smiled.

Cheryl felt her neck and face warming. To Ferris she said, "How can you be so _casual_ about this? This isn't just some backseat hump in the parking lot. Do you have any idea what she _did_ to him? The danger he's in?"

Ferris stared at her. "I was talking about you spending night before last at his place. What are _you_ talking about?"

…

"This is going to sound harsh, but you're probably better off." Christie sipped her mug, staring down into its contents.

"You don't know him. He doesn't deserve to be used up and tossed aside by some little witch with calluses on her labia."

"Actually, I've known him for years. We worked together when he was Jack Lynch's fair-haired boy. I met most of the train wrecks he dated, and I was there when they jumped the tracks. You can't tell me he didn't know exactly how things were going to end with them before he even started." She set her cup down. "Some guys just can't handle a solid relationship. So they always pick up losers and psychos, so that when it's over all they need to feel is relief. If they accidentally end up with a good woman, they somehow find a way to screw up the relationship. You can only feel so much pity for them, knowing they're helping to do it to themselves." She pushed back her seat. "I'm headed for the desserts. Anybody?"

Cheryl watched her go. "That was harsh. Were they ever an item?" _She doesn't seem his type…_

"Not likely. I suppose he might have consoled her when Jack Lynch left, but I doubt it."

"Wait, her and …"

"Yup. Colby was Lynch's fair-haired boy, but she was definitely his fair-haired girl. He promoted Frank out of the field because he showed a talent for planning and leadership. He got her _into_ an X-Team, first and only woman ever, because she had a talent for kicking ass. And for the sneaky stuff they wouldn't let him do anymore, once they put him in an office." Ferris sipped from her mug. "I know what you're thinking. It passed through everybody's mind back then, especially with Ivana getting fast-tracked once she started warming Miles' bed. But if Christie ever got bumped onto a list because she was Jack's girlfriend, she damn well proved she could handle the job."

"So when did they break up?"

"They didn't exactly. He sent her to Central Europe on a deep-cover intel mission, out of contact with the Shop for months. When she surfaced, he was gone."

"Ouch. No wonder she thinks they're all scum."

"You don't know the half of it. She's dating Alicia Turner in PsyOps now, so the rumor goes."

"You can hear anything in the wind around here."

"True. But once or twice a month, Alicia finds an excuse to go to Maclean, and sometimes Christie finds one to visit Boulder. When that happens, they both spend the night off-base. Give me another explanation."


End file.
